Dear Colleagues:

The State of Colorado today released its March revenue forecast, which, as expected, indicates a continued downturn in state revenues for this fiscal year and next. While it’s too early to provide any detailed information as to how the state will address this shortfall, I wanted to get a note out to campus today to reassure and remind everyone that we’ve been planning for a downturn of roughly this magnitude throughout our budget-planning activities this spring. We adopted our conservative “plan for the worst and hope for the best” approach so that we wouldn’t be caught off guard at this point in the year, and thankfully, that approach will serve us well now. Although I can’t make any definitive pronouncements yet, I remain quite optimistic that — based on today’s report — we won’t have to revise our planning or look at any additional reductions beyond those already proposed for FY09 or FY10.

So don’t get too nervous about this latest economic news — these numbers are in line with what we anticipated when we devised our budget-cutting scenarios for this year and next. Enjoy the last two days of spring break, and I’ll see you back on campus Monday.

-tony

Dr. Tony Frank
Interim President