Southern Oregon University has six weeks to work with a consultant to create a long-term plan for fiscal sustainability, following $15 million in stopgap funding from the state.
Deloitte Consulting has been hired to help create a long-term operational plan by April 30. Consultants have been on the SOU campus recently, holding a series of focus groups.
SOU President Rick Bailey has already gone through two fiscal crises in his tenure, but he said he remains hopeful.
“I’m not going to say it’s not anxious or anxiety ridden. It is,” he said in a Friday press conference. “But I haven’t lost my optimism.”
FILE - SOU President Rick Bailey answers questions about the university's recently-approved realignment plan in April 2023.
Jane Vaughn / JPR
Without additional changes, SOU is projected to be unable to make payroll in June 2027, even with the $15 million. That date had previously been February 2027.
Bailey said the university will once again have to undergo a major transformation.
“We’ve been really wrestling this beast and have made headway,” he said. “The state acknowledges that we’ve done that work and now is funding us to really go and slay this beast once and for all and get it to the ground.”
The timeline for that work and the nature of the changes have yet to be determined and depend on what the upcoming report includes.
“What we don’t want to do is wait until the spring of 2027 to implement a transformation that has to be complete by the summer of ’27,” Bailey said. “We will be using this next year to undergo that transformation.”
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At a special Board of Trustees meeting Thursday, Bailey mentioned the possibility of opening a line of credit, although he hasn’t said what would be used as collateral.
At a finance and administration committee meeting earlier that day, committee members criticized Bailey for not informing the committee sooner that the university received a $7.4 million employee retention credit in August. The refundable tax credit for businesses paid employees’ wages during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time the university received the money, SOU was undergoing a plan to cut $10 million over four years, including layoffs, so Bailey said announcing that funding would have been “inappropriate,” especially since it would not have addressed the issue.
“Our use of one-time money to mask structural problems, that has been our biggest challenge as an institution,” he said Thursday. “The last thing we wanted to do is jump in and see this as a panacea to solve problems.”
Still, some members pushed back.
“We went through resiliency not knowing that this money was received and implemented,” Trustee Daniel Santos said.
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Committee members raised concerns that the university’s cash flow statement and budget projections are not clear enough to show the state that previous cuts have been effective.
The cash flow forecast also included SOU receiving the $15 million in a lump sum in June, which one trustee said was “unlikely.”
JPR is licensed to Southern Oregon University, but its newsroom operates independently. No university official reviewed or edited this story before it was published.
Jane Vaughan is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
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