Special projects at UNM will have to shave their budgets to accommodate cuts from the Legislature and the University.
Marc Saavedra, director of Government & Community Relations, said the Legislature cut about 28 percent from funds for special projects, not including ethnic centers such as El Centro de la Raza.
Saavedra said at the Budget Summit on Thursday that among the special projects, faculty scholarships will see an average of 28 percent cuts, and the statewide services and legislature initiatives will be cut from 28 percent to 50 percent.
The ethnic centers will be fully funded, Saavedra said.
President David Schmidly said the University does not have the money to counteract the cuts.
"We are not planning on covering any of these deficits," he said at the Budget Summit. "We simply do not have the resources without increasing revenue or re-allocating within the budget scenario."
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The University Budget Office has scheduled a meeting for next Wednesday to announce how much money it will receive from the Legislature for special projects.
Judy Flynn-O'Brien, director of the Corinne Wolfe Children's Law Center, said the center estimated its cut would be about 22 percent, amounting to more than $77,000. She said the law center was originally going to receive $346,600 from the Legislature, but that total is down to $269,400.
The law center provides training and technical assistance to professionals and volunteers who work with children and families in abuse and juvenile justice cases, Flynn-O'Brien said.
"We will just get as creative as we can to provide the services we need to provide," she said. "We will just do the best we can. We will undoubtedly not provide quite as much training and support as we would have otherwise, but we'll hang in there and continue to provide some good service."
Flynn-O'Brien said the law center will also work with the Judicial Education Center to try to combine resources for training.
Cheo Torres, vice president for Student Affairs, said the special projects within Student Affairs will see smaller cuts than the law center.
"They weren't major cuts, but I think we will be able to do OK for our special projects," he said. "Some of them weren't even 28 percent. They were smaller than that."
Torres said some of the special projects receiving cuts include the Mentoring Institute and Research Opportunity program.
If other funding sources can't be located, the special projects will make do with the funds they still have, Torres said.
"I think what we will be doing is we will try to adapt to some of the funding cuts, and if we can find other sources, we will, and if not, we will trim down some of the services," he said.
Saavedra said these cuts will not change and that special projects' budgets will shrink as a result, unless their managing departments help them find other funding sources.
He said funds could mainly come from other areas within the special project's department.
"From what I understand, there's not going to be anything else done with these cuts," he said. "They are going to stand as they are, but there is still some room if the individual schools or the units that oversee these special projects decide to find money for these cuts."
In last month's legislative session, the Legislative Finance Committee had proposed more than $11 million in cuts from Main Campus and the Health Sciences Center Instruction and General funds and special projects.
Saavedra's team was able to get $1.3 million returned to fund some of the special projects, including full funding for the ethnic centers.
For the next fiscal year, Saavedra's office will measure the performance of all of the special projects on campus.
According to Saavedra's presentation, his office will make recommendations to the Legislative Finance Committee based on these assessments.
"If you don't have your performance measures or outcomes or at least demonstrate that you're working on them . we are probably going to take a serious look at recommending these not get funded or moving their funds to other programs that show that," he said.
