TO: Campus Community
FR: Laura Lupei, Associate Vice President for University Budget and Resource Planning
The 2024-25 Campus Budget has been finalized and posted to the OpenBook portal, which can be accessed through the Budget Office website: https://budget.sonoma.edu/
Though there was some indication in the spring that the CSU would not receive additional funding this year, over the summer the state finalized the 2024-25 budget agreement and provided the CSU with a $240-million increase in base funding as per the original governor’s compact proposal.
With the additional support from the state to the CSU, the campus has received an increase to base funding of $4.4 million, which will cover mandatory cost increases related to employee salary and benefits costs, provide funding for Graduation Initiative and student support programming, and cover other operational support and compliance programs.
Despite the additional funding from the state for this year, the campus continues to manage an ongoing budget deficit brought on by a decline in enrollment and unfunded increases in costs. This year, $5 million of base budget reductions were identified through the academic reorganization and by aligning instructional costs with the current full-time equivalent students. With all of these adjustments, the remaining base deficit for the 2024-25 year is $7.4 million.
A plan has been approved to utilize one-time funds and balance the remaining deficit for this year, with many of the same approaches that have been used in recent years, including using prior year roll-forward balances, campus reserves, and anticipated one-time savings in the current year. All strategies used to solve the remaining deficit in 2024-25 are one-time solutions, which means that we will still need to identify permanent, base solutions to resolve the remaining base deficit as we begin planning for the 2025-26 year.
Thank you all for your hard work and contributions to our campus as we continue to make progress toward growing our enrollment and balancing our budget. We encourage the campus community to continue to engage with shared governance on this topic, including with their President’s Budget Advisory Committee representatives, and to attend the Budget and Planning Forum this fall. More details on the forum will be announced at a later date.
Please reach out to budget@sonoma.edu with any questions.