Newspaper Page Text
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"ie Red and Black • Thursday, October 4, 1990 • 5
University Creamery hanging in despite budget reductions
By LANCE HELMS
Staff Writer
The University Creamery, for 51
years a south campus staple, now
faces an uncertain future as it
comes to grips with a 13 percent
budget reduction.
For some private businesses, a
13 percent loss of revenue would
mean certain failure, but the
Creamery is subsidized by the
state and doesn’t have to post a
surplus every year.
“We’re given a certain amount to
make every year — a goal — and
we’re expected to make that,” said
Assistant Creamery Manager
Sheldon Spivey. “But it’s not the
same as a private retail outlet or a
private industry. They have to
keep updating equipment.”
“We don’t have a profit margin
per ae,” Spivey said. “We’re mainly
a service to the University — that’s
our goal.”
The Creamery, located in the
Dairy Sciences building, sells fresh
dairy products manufactured daily
at a University-owned plant —
milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream
— plus sandwiches from the Tate
Student Center Bulldog Room,
juices and Frito-Lay products.
The Creamery supplies the Uni
versity’s dairy products, and its
sales outlet in Dairy Sciences aver
ages 800 customers a day — except
in the summer, when the number
is around 450 to 500.
Review committee designated
pei
cut is a committee that will eval
uate the University’s need for on
site dairy production and sales.
College of Agriculture Dean Wil
liam Flatt designated the com
mittee last month but it hasn’t
met.
He said review committees are a
common self-monitoring exercise
in the college, which uses them to
determine the effectiveness of its
programs. In the past, “review
teams” have studied whole depart
ments like agronomy and agricul
tural economics rather than small
programs like the Creamery.
The agriculture college, of which
the Creamery is a part, slashed 3
percent of its budget this year, and
Flatt said there could be another
cut in January.
He said the likely targets for
major budget cuts are services, like
the Creamery, with inventories
that can be scaled back.
Creamery reduces inventory
Spivey combats the Creamery’s
tight budget by ordering more
products with long shelf lives in
large quantities, like flavorings, ice
cream cones and cleaning chemi
cals. One vendor has agreed to let
him buy in bulk and leave the
products in the warehouse until
the Creamery calls for them.
But he’s reduced overall his in
ventory of items not produced on
campus, including “novelty items”
like Mayfield ice cream bars.
He said the cold sandwiches sell
out earlier than before, but he can’t
increase their inventory.
“We’ve just tried to make do —
tried not to make people mad by
the cuts,” Spivey said. “Right now
it’s just a juggling act.”
Ag budget cut 3 percent
In the agriculture college, both
the Agricultural Experiment Sta
tions System (AESS), which posted
a $1.4 million shortfall, and the Co
operative Extension Service (CES)
suffered a 3 percent cutback, while
resident instruction lost 2.8 per
cent. The CES cut amounted to $1
million.
The Creamery is a Dairy Sci
ences program under the agricul
ture experiment stations.
Tfjcy Stenbprg/Thc Red ana Bloc
Vicki Spray: A Creamery employee makes a milkshake.
The Creamery is located in the Dairy Sciences building.
AESS Director Clive Donoho
said the 13 percent cutback is actu
ally a “payback,” meaning each de
partment must pay back 13
percent of its budget over the
course of the fiscal year, which
ends in June.
The 13 percent payback in AESS
comes from the operating budget
as opposed to salary expenses.
Hourly workers are paid from the
operating budget.
The reduction won’t affect the
Creamery’s salaried workers, some
of whom have worked there up to
15 years.
Normally, relief for the college
and the Creamery would be in
sight as soon ns January, when the
state General Assembly draws up
the 1991-92 budget.
But this year, with talk of short
ages and recession in the air, Jan
uary 1991 could bring even heavier
reductions if state revenues don’t
meet the projections the General
Assembly counted on when it
drafted the 1990-91 budget last
January.
“With the state revenues coming
in lower than when the budget was
made up, it’s very unlikely that
there will be additional funds,"
Flatt said. “We may have to end up
cutting more.”
‘Creamery will continue’
The review committee will con
sider three basic issues sur
rounding the Creamery:
• How well it meets the Univer
sity’s academic needs as a research
facility in terms of training stu
dents.
• The costs associated with
maintaining it.
• Its past revenues and sur
pluses.
The committee will include fac
ulty from out-of-state schools as
well as in-state industry profes
sionals.
Flatt said earlier review teams,
in their studies of individual de
partments, focused on things like
courses taught, research programs
and extension programs.
He said the college’s directors
have raised the issue of the
Creamery’s effectiveness before —
what costs may be involved in sup
plying up-to-date equipment, what
the college’s priorities are, whether
the Creamery accomplishes
enough research and whether it’s
efficient.
Flatt declined to talk about the
Creamery’s fate, saying he doesn’t
want to second-guess the com
mittee.
Spivey said, “I think the
Creamery will continue to operate
as it is.”
Dairy science not ‘big business'
Although the plant that pro
duces the University’s dairy prod
ucts is primarily a research and
teaching tool, there are only a
handful of students to teach.
“Over the years — at least in
terms of dairy manufacturing —
that’s not a field many students are
looking to,” Spivey said. “It’s not
the glamorous *big business’ —
people are looking for the bigger
dollars in big business and wanting
to get away from the manufac
turing end of dairy science.”
This fall there are nine students
in the dairy processing program —
the same number as last fall. The
largest enrollment in the college
this fall was 155, for agricultural
economics, which had 163 last fall.
Environmental health science
grew the fastest, from 40 last fall to
112 this fall.
Spivey said the Creamery can’t
function indefinitely on a reduced
budget.
“Obviously, if I’ve got a 13 per
cent reduction in my operating
budget, my vendors aren’t going to
stop going up in prices,” he said.
‘The only alternative to that is to
cut back in services.
"As long as we can be a service to
the University as a whole and pro
vide dairy products to the dining
halls, I think we’ll be okay.”
Spivey said that for the dining
halls, who buy the University’s
dairy products wholesale, his prod
ucts are competitive with those on
the market in terms of quality,
price and convenience.
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