(Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles examining how campus units are being affected by budget cutbacks.)

Cuts in state funding to the UC system are tightening belts all over campus, including at the Office of Administration, which handles a wide variety of campus business, from human resources to facilities and public safety.

This year the Office of Administration took a permanent $2.65 million budget cut or 5.7 percent reduction in its base budget of about $46.9 million, excluding exemptions for safety and purchased utilities. The office includes more than 60 departments and about 1,450 employees.

To meet the cuts, the office is reducing building maintenance efforts, reducing non-essential operating expenses, delaying replacement of equipment where possible, maximizing organizational improvements and reducing some staff positions through attrition and a few layoffs.

Stan Nosek, vice chancellor for the Office of Administration, said the new budget realities pose a challenge to the long-run vitality of UC Davis.

"The cuts to the Office of Administration will affect the campus by reducing efforts in building maintenance, human resource services, grounds care, financial services and equipment purchasing, among other areas," he said.

Nosek is seeking feedback from the campus community on what services his office should emphasize, given that some programs will receive less funding in the years ahead.

"In the next couple months we'll meet with deans and vice chancellors and ask them how best our office can serve them," Nosek said. "These priorities and those we develop will guide us through our budget planning for next year. While these cuts are painful, it's an opportunity to take a really hard look at the way we deliver services."

He noted in particular his unit's efforts to simplify administrative approaches, to put systems and processes in place to most efficiently serve the campus's 21st-century needs, and to model strong business ethics, customer service and personal and organizational accountability.

The Office of Administration includes fire, police, human resources, employee health, accounting, facilities, architects and engineers, campus events, parking and transportation, materiel management, reprographics, mail, agricultural services, risk management, mediation services, business contracts and environmental health and safety.

Nosek is concerned about large budget cuts coming at a time when the campus is expanding and more students, faculty and staff are coming and going each day at UC Davis.

"This is a challenge for us as we are a growing university that has significant pressures related to facilities, financial services, transportation and safety," he said.

Based on the new budget, Nosek said, there will be less cleaning and upkeep of campus buildings and grounds. He compared this to changing the oil on one's car every 5,000 miles instead of the recommended 3,500 miles.

"You may not notice it right away," he said, "but over time the wear and tear becomes evident. Our preventative maintenance ability is extremely low at this point."

He said that the contract was not renewed for window washing of all the high-rise buildings on campus. Another issue is that as the lab space grows, the number of staff and resources at Environmental Health and Safety -- which helps keep workplaces on campus safe -- has not kept pace.

Rising utility costs have been another major budget issue.

In the last few years, UC Davis experienced significant increases in purchased utility costs and in operations and maintenance of facilities, largely due to capital growth and an aging infrastructure. Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw has provided a one-time allocation of $5.6 million and $500,000 in permanent funds as part of a multi-year strategy to help offset these utility costs.

A one-time sum of $850,000 was allocated for maintenance of new space coming available in 2003-04 that was not permanently funded by the state. And an additional $360,000 in funds was provided to support unfunded maintenance and operating costs associated with student-fee space.

To address the substantial backlog of deferred maintenance projects, the state in the past few years provided from $5 to $8 million annually in state and bond funds. But these fund sources have ended recently. To partially offset the loss of these funds, Hinshaw provided $2.5 million last year and another $1.5 million this year.

In other areas, Nosek reduced his discretionary or emergency fund and eliminated two support positions in the vice chancellor's office for a savings of $100,000.

Kim Rhodes, director of resource planning in Office of Administration, said the budget cuts to the Office of Administration are in two primary areas -- General Administration, which took a $1.1 million decrease, and Operations and Maintenance, which suffered a $1.5 million cut. Public safety services were exempt from cuts.

Rhodes said the Office of Administration has had to lay off 10 people and let about 17 positions go unfilled. Because of staff workload issues, the office decided not to participate in START, the voluntary time reduction program introduced in May this year as a way of reducing staff salary costs.

Another budgetary impact, Rhodes said, was the delay of a long-awaited revision of the UC Davis Financial Information System (DAFIS) TP2 project that included the accounts receivable system for the entire campus. By not moving ahead on this project, accounting saved $556,000. Also, reorganization efforts between material management and mail division resulted in letting two management positions go unfilled, saving about $90,000.

"However, these improvements to DAFIS would have benefited campus business over the long term," Rhodes said. "So, while we can downsize or delay a program now, it may actually cost the campus more in the long run through indirect or direct costs."

Another area that received cuts ($253,000) was human resources. Six positions are forecast to be lost to attrition over the next two years, Rhodes said. While studying ways to become more automated and efficient, human resources will be challenged to maintain its prompt response times to requests, she added.

Rhodes said relocating Campus Events and Visitors Services from downtown Davis to campus allowed for a savings of $20,000. The campus also eliminated one of its three daily Davis-to-Berkeley bus shuttles, saving another $27,000.