LU: Curators hear "clean' audit report

Lincoln University's financial operations are sound.

The Springfield accounting firm Baird, Kurtz and Dobson reported that finding this week in its annual audit.

At its meeting Tuesday, LU's Faculty Senate asked curators to find a way to give pay raises in the coming year, and the board approved a contract to replace the roof over the Scruggs University Center and made some changes in the school's bidding regulations.

The audit covered the 2012-13 and 2013-14 business years that ended June 30, and was a "clean" report with no recommendations for major changes.

LU President Kevin Rome called the overall audit report "very pleasing. We are working towards financial stability and increasing our budget and revenue - so we're headed in the right direction."

The audit showed LU's current assets were down about $1.6 million, but that was offset by an overall increase in cash and investments.

"And we're not situated to, really, be an entity that's out making money," Rome said. "We're serving the public good, so we shouldn't be making significant money."

Making money also is the faculty's concern, Faculty Senate President Amy Gossett reported.

"All 12 (other four-year) public universities in the state of Missouri have granted at least a 1.5 percent increase in salaries to their faculties," she said she learned at a recent conference. "We have not had an increase - or COLAs (cost of living adjustments), for that matter - since 2008, which amounts to, essentially, a salary cut every year since 2008."

Additionally, she said, a recent national survey of public, four-year colleges and universities shows LU's pay is next-to-last in the country - better only than the Mississippi University for Women.

"The point is, it's hard to attract and keep good, engaging faculty when they can, literally, go to any other public university in the country and teach," she said, "and make more money."

While LU's faculty generally love their jobs and their students, Gossett said, increasing pay and returning to a policy allowing sabbaticals both would help improve teachers' interest in staying at Lincoln.

Rome told the board administrators are studying the issues.

"We're trying to hold $1.2 million that we've already allocated to implement some increases in January," he explained. "But we cannot release that money until we close the books on the tuition revenue."

He expects to allocate money to each department, and let them decide how the money should be distributed within that department.

He cautioned it may take several years to get raises to everyone.

"The first thing we had to do was, we had to get our enrollment back up - because we could not address those issues when we had declining enrollment," Rome told the News Tribune. "Now that enrollment seems to be going in the right direction, hopefully we can maintain it and surpass it next year - that gives us the continuous revenue to be able to support raises."

Curators agreed to spend $332,140 to replace the Scruggs University Center roof, with Weathercraft of Jefferson City winning the contract to install an 80mm rubber roof on all sections.

The main roof over the building's top floor "is a 1990 roof and has over 140 patches," design and construction director Sheila Gassner told the board.

It has major leaks, she noted.

A couple of large trash cans have been placed in the ballroom to catch water coming through one hole in the roof.

Other roof sections over lower portions of the building no longer are covered by warranties, Gassner reported, so the project will replace them as well, "so it all would have a 20-year warranty."

The board changed Lincoln's bid policies so that expenses under $5,000 don't need to be bid - up $2,000 from the current limit.

The change also eliminated the departments' ability to bid their own purchases - and it allows exceptions to bidding requirements for time-sensitive projects or the staff's professional judgment.

Curators also approved a policy change allowing some students to enroll for the next semester's classes, even if they still have an outstanding balance on the fees they must pay to the school.

Comptroller Sandy Koetting told the board, "At this point, there is a standard where we're going to allow a student who has a balance of $1,300 or less to register, and not have restrictions on their accounts."

Koetting and Rome said those students will be put on a payment plan.

Rome added, "The greatest desire is to keep as many students enrolled as possible, to progress toward degrees."