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The Ducks have $63M in cash. Will Pres Schill let them keep spending it on their raises and bonuses?

VPFA Jamie Moffitt has noted that UO’s operating reserves are about $60M, for a general fund budget of about $650M. After it’s gone, it’s not clear how UO will meet payroll.

Meanwhile the Ducks are sitting on $63M in their “Legacy Fund”, for an annual budget of about $125M. This was set up at the insistence of the Legislature to ensure that they had enough money to pay off the $230M in Arena bonds. (The academic budget pays about $450K a year to help them out). Phil Knight has donated about $145M to this so far, and the Ducks have used it as a slush fund, raiding it whenever they want more money to pay themselves higher salaries or bigger bonuses.

The most recent report is here, and the gist is below:

15 Comments

  1. thedude 03/23/2020

    So that gets us 1 more month. We need the students to come next fall.

    • uomatters Post author | 03/23/2020

      Let’s not catastrophize. Worst case we lose 1/3 of tuition or $100M for a year. Between Moffitt and the Duck reserves, we’ve got that covered until the 2021 Track and Field cash and the ensuing enrollment boom tuition comes pouring in.

      • thedude 03/24/2020

        Olympics delayed.
        Trials delayed.
        2021 TAF still on or delayed too?

  2. zach 03/24/2020

    The UO and the city planners have quietly mapped out a new road through the failed and controversial Riverfront Research Park area. The survey stakes seem to show a east west road that is likely planned to connect promised plastic turf fields UO has threatened to build all along the riverfront…to find the survey stakes go to the steam plant and then proceed about one city block upstream and they are all over. Now that campus is very empty I bet they are trying to rush this road through. Perhaps some of the 63 mill can go towards this road nobody (except a few good ol duck contractors) wants ?

    • Anonymoose 03/25/2020

      This is a realignment of the bike path away from the river.

      • zach 03/26/2020

        The new pathways they build along the river are the size of streets (see new section near boat landing across river as example) and are used by maintenance vehicles and police cars and whatever other vehicles that get away with it…the new street sized “bike path” is being rerouted to make way for plastic turf fields along the rivers edge…the city govt ignored unanimous disapproval (except for a spokesperson from Willamette Riverkeeper) and approved the conditional use permit for the unwanted sports facilities. It was later printed in the Register Guard the the Riverkeeper group receives money from UO and the spokesperson did not disclose anything about that at the hearing. I wonder if the money from UO was contingent on her testimony.

        • Anonymoose 03/26/2020

          Bike paths are built to a standard of 10-12 feet to allow safe use by bi-directional traffic alongside pedestrian use. Yes, this will also accommodate use by an occasional motor vehicle for maintenance and public safety. The new alignment is farther away from the river, allowing an enhancement of the riparian habitat. I get that you’re cranky over the athletic fields, but please don’t shit on people trying to take a sustainable mode of transportation while you’re at it.

          • zach 03/28/2020

            hmm what a silly and crude response – I am taking issue with underhanded, unilateral, subversive and illegal closed-door planning and development by certain persons at UO campus planning and the city planners…….. which means am trying to somehow harm sustainable bicyclists (?),,,,,there has been a long history of area 51 type planning in the Riverfront Research Park….moreover, I once prevented UO from building a defense research facility in the exact empty riverfront lot now filled with your sustainable survey stakes..at that time it was called the Multiscale Materials and Devices Center….UO renamed the proposed lab and eventually sited it near the center of campus underground next to Oregon Hall…they renamed it because (quoting the director) Skip Rung, MMDC “sounded too much like WMD”….if you have the need to feel offended try finding something somebody actually wrote first ?

            • IBE 03/28/2020

              I too do not like the idea of more fields out there. And moving the bike path? It is an Urban waterfront. The whole idea was to reconnect Eugene to its riverfront. If you wanted riparian habitat there is more than enough in the undeveloped brownfields (extend it by creating riparian areas around the canoe canal and millrace, recreate the millrace pond, plant some trees, move the levies back with a more natural transition, build singe track out there, etc.) … and you could have just left the old brownfield. But the desire expressed by the community (and I think the UO) is that we want to reconnect to the water. I too like the larger bike paths. I really liked the EWEB plaza.

              • zach 03/31/2020

                I think good planning happens with actual users involved not with 3 or 4 sport-centric planners making all the decisions.

  3. tvs 03/24/2020

    The UO has under two weeks to get all classes online, yet there is a hiring freeze. How on earth is the already stretched online ed / Canvas team able to pull this off without additional help? How is this going for all of you?

    • Dog 03/24/2020

      I am just ignoring everything until Monday
      then I intend to panic …

    • Observer 03/24/2020

      The online ed people are an obstacle rather than a help, with insisting courses be put online via Backward Design and a complete philosophical rethinking of one’s whole teaching approach, rather than just getting pragmatic and designing suitable online assignments and getting them up on Canvas without all the fancy bells and whistles. It is much more efficient to skip the online team entirely. So if they are too busy to see people, that saves a lot of time for the actual folks putting courses online.

      • buzz 03/26/2020

        It’s an emergency experiment. If done right, including getting feedback from students and faculty at the end of the term, there will be a lot to learn and improve upon. If everyone’s forced into some kind of rigid mediocrity there might not be any Excellence, and more bad moral for all sides.

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