UC Berkeley’s chief financial officer, Rosemarie Rae, laid out her vision for the campus’s budget and took questions from a standing-room-only audience of faculty, students and staff during a Friday forum.
Rae, who has served as the campus’s top budget mind since 2017, oversees UC Berkeley’s $2.8 billion budget and is one of the key administration leaders tasked with finding a sustainable model for the campus, which is trying to shrink a $110 million budget deficit.
The first speaker in a new series called Campus Conversations, Rae told the assembled group of staff that her office hoped to end the campus’s decade-old deficit by the 2020 fiscal year. So far this year, she said, campus units are on track to reduce the overall deficit to $57 million, through a combination of new revenues and expense reductions.
Besides stability, Rae said, a balanced budget would let the campus buy bonds and other investments to pay for new academic buildings. UC system regulations prevent campuses from using debt to finance capital expenses without a balanced budget.
Rae also took questions from staff, including what the administration stood to gain from paying for part of the $314 million seismic retrofit of Memorial Stadium and what hopes Rae had for increased support from the state. In her answers, Rae laid out the stadium’s debt costs and said the chancellor would be making a decision later this year. As for increased state support? Don’t count on it, Rae said.
Others, like Brianna Vandre, who just started as a financial analyst on campus last week, said she just appreciated the chance to learn about UC Berkeley’s budget.
“I feel like this gave me a really broad overview of how it all works,” she said.
Rae encouraged faculty, staff and students to contact her office with additional questions.
Future Campus Conversations scheduled this semester will hear from Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos on February 12, Vice Chancellor for Administration Marc Fisher on March 22 and Chancellor Carol Christ on April 24.