Ohio University’s Board of Trustees will look into the future of several houses surrounding campus at Thursday and Friday meetings.
There are 15 houses in the “small house analysis,” according to the Board of Trustees agenda. The average age of these houses are 119 years old, and only one of the 15 is being used by its intended occupant. Exactly 13 of the 15 houses are located in the College Green Historic District.
The houses affected would be Trisolini House, Pilcher House and Brown House. Both Brown and Pilcher are currently vacant, and the Cutler Scholars program office is in Trisolini House.
Deborah Shaffer, vice president for finance and administration, and Shawna Bolin, assistant vice president for university planning and real estate, will present the houses at the meeting.
Brown House is in poor condition with structural damage, and it is recommended that it be demolished, according to the agenda. It would cost between $275,000 and $400,000 to demolish it. Brown House was built in 1928 and purchased by OU in 1964.
Shaffer and Bolin will present to have Trisolini House renovated for about $1.5 million. This would include maintenance for the roof, windows, exterior foundation, HVAC, electricity, fire alarms and ADA accessibility. Design and renovation would last until the 2021 fiscal year.
Bolin and Shaffer recommend that Pilcher be offered for a nonuniversity use because it is “not integral to campus character,” according to the agenda. Pilcher House was built during the 1800s.
Pilcher House was used as The Post’s newsroom in the 1970s. It was also used for the Athena Yearbook’s office, according to the university’s website.
The board will also be asked to approve funding to move administration out of Grosvenor Hall, according to the agenda. The current board request is for $7,529,333. Design and construction would last from late fiscal year 2019 until early fiscal year 2022.
Another project on the agenda is replacing Lindley Hall’s roof. The board has already approved $500,000 for the project and another $907,265 is being requested. Design and construction would last from late fiscal year 2019 until early fiscal year 2020.
The internal audit found that there has been about a 10 percent decrease in university purchasing cards, or PCARDs, going from 2,460 in February 2018 to 2,218 in February 2019, according to the agenda.
After declining enrollments in multiple degree programs, the board will vote on a resolution to suspend them, according to the agenda. These include the bachelor of arts in Russian and the associate of applied science in health technology on the Southern Campus.
In the 2019 financial forecast, the board will see that OU is saving almost $10 million from salaries. OU is down about $6 million from both graduate and undergraduate tuition, according to the agenda.
OU was budgeted to make $749.2 million for the 2019 fiscal year in revenues but are forecasting earnings of $752.4 million. Expenses are about $10 million less than what they were budgeted originally.
Athens colleges are drawing $6.8 million from reserves, according to the agenda. Regional campuses are putting about $800,000 into reserves and auxiliaries are drawing $8.3 million from reserves. Central and administrative operations are transferring $4 million into reserves.
OU budgeted to receive about $1.6 million more in gifts and contributions than it actually received. Capital costs were $6.3 million, which is $800,000 more than expected.
The university is requesting an increase of 2.5 percent to the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s instructional fees, non-resident surcharge and technology fee.
The board will also look at creating a new OU affiliate. Ohio Rural Health Association would provide networking, education and advocacy, according to the agenda.
In the University Human Resources Annual Report, it will be announced that there are 44 employees that are “significant negative outliers,” according to the agenda. These people have significant gaps between their predicted pay and actual pay. To adjust this, there would be an impact of $55,456 to the budget.
In the Human Resources Metrics, it was reported that in the 2018 fiscal year there were 212,106 vacation hours taken, an increase of 37,412 from 2014, according to the agenda. The sick hours increased from 72,319 in fiscal year 2014 to 96,788 in the 2018 fiscal year.
