The Governor has sent his veto message to the legislature, and it did not include the funding for PASCAL programs. This means that funding at the $200,000 in recurring money is secure. Thus, we know the size of the footer we have for rebuilding.

 

Yesterday, the board discussed plans for stabilizing our programs and infrastructure that they’ve been working on for the past month. They’ve reached a degree of consensus on its broad program outlines and a broad plan for raising revenue for FY 2008-9. This strategy was vetted by and received the strong support of the directors at our major libraries. The next steps in the process include discussions with the senior staff at the Commission on Higher Education, presentation to, and discussion with, the membership, and further discussion with other institutional and external stakeholders.

Input from member libraries, through the two surveys as well as direct communication with board members has been an important element in this process, and this will increasingly be the case as we pull it together. We had good response rates to both surveys and we’ll be making the results of the surveys available to you in the near future. We’ll be soliciting input from those who were unable to respond as well.

While we are far from the finish line, I’d like to acknowledge everyone involved – board members for their perseverance in this grueling exercise, and the membership at large, both for your input and your forbearance.