Dr. Franz reported on the substitute scholarship plan by Steve Windom. It is a good plan but there are no additional sources of funding for it. There is some talk of out-of-state student subsidies, but the information on this is not accurate. The second issue is the exemption or the allocations to non-educational entities. This is a possibility but still not the best solution. The third issue is the increase in the trust fund. This is not a good idea because it then prevents any increase from going to faculty and staff salaries.

Dr. Franz talked about the new Recreational Sports Facility. He talked about a memo he had received from Rolf Goebel. Some of the faculty consider loosing the use of Spragins Hall as a free benefit to have to pay for use of a new facility as a loss of a benefit. Dr. Franz pointed out that to build and equip and operate a very nice facility is not possible without other funding because the State will not provide enough to complete and operate it. We cannot afford what it would take to provide this kind of facility. We have to bond about $9M to build and operate the facility. The State has only provided about $2.4M. Noble and Goodrum have signed an agreement for this based on offering public memberships. We have to have membership fees in order to pay the operating costs of this kind of facility. After investigating the possibilities, there is a law that prohibits offering the facility to faculty and staff for free if others are being charged a membership fee. Another glitch is if this is given to the faculty and staff as a benefit for free/paid for by the University, they will have a tax liability on an increase in the amount of the membership fee per year. This did not seem quite fair to those who would not use it to have this tax burden. The current proposal is to offer this to those who want to sign up as a free benefit/paid for by the University, and those who do not want it are unaffected. Money would be allocated to take care of the cost of the membership for those who want to sign up and they would have the tax liability. All this is still in the works and is still being investigated. They are looking at what would happen with retired faculty, alumni, students taking less than six hours, etc. They are also looking at the effect on the use of Spragins—it will likely be used for intercollegiate athletics. The Racquetball Courts will remain in Spragins Hall and the question of their use and whether there will be a fee for using them is still in the discussion phase..

Dr. Franz reported there is no consensus on the State funding and the budget issues. Dr. Franz reported he still believes all increase in the appropriations should go to faculty and staff salaries. There are some erosions to this plan. He reported UAH has done a study of the faculty salaries by discipline by rank and compared it to a similar study done by NASULGC. We are $2M off the mark. Dr. Franz suggests an index increase based on this divergence or an increase to faculty and staff salaries based on the ACHE index. ACHE is going to look into this also. The Council of Presidents met with the Chair of ACHE and decided the best effort at this time would be to go to the Legislature with the idea of simply reserving one-third of the education funds for Higher Education and the details of the distribution could be worked out later.

Dr. Franz announced that Jeanne Fisher and Reva Bailey are both retiring—Jeanne Fisher at the end of the year and Reva Bailey at the end of Spring. He announced there is an advertisement out for the Registrar position and we are currently recruiting for that position. He announced we will be looking for someone with much experience, especially in the SIS. He encouraged everyone to express their appreciation for the many years of service from both of these individuals.