Millions more in budget cuts are coming to UNC-Chapel Hill – and somehow, this seemed to be a surprise to the very people tasked with making the decision.
At last week’s Board of Trustees meeting, the board voted for $16.5 million in new budget cuts. These cuts were proposed in addition to the $70 million in cuts that the Trustees previously approved in July 2025.
As outlined by Carolina Alumni:
“The resolution was introduced by Trustee Marty Kotis ’91 and was not submitted early enough to be included in the board’s public-facing agenda. Trustee Ralph Meekins ’83 told the board he first saw the resolution a half hour prior to its introduction at the budget, finance and infrastructure committee meeting in the afternoon of Jan. 21.
The resolution said the additional cuts were necessary because the University “continues to face material uncertainty in its revenue profile,” citing specifically the absence of anticipated enrollment growth funding from the state legislature, which has yet to pass a comprehensive budget, and the absence of additional sports wagering revenue that would have offset athletics budget pressures.
The University originally aimed to cut $8.5 million in administrative costs through its ServiceFirst initiative, which seeks to consolidate administrative positions such as human resources, finance and technology workers into shared service teams, eliminating “duplicative administrative structures.” Proponents of the initiative said it will improve efficiency across departments. Others said it will lead to unnecessary layoffs and a loss of specialized skills.”
All the context is helpful to understand the situation, but it’s easy to get hung up on the first paragraph – the one describing where fellow board members had only minutes to review the proposal before voting on a resolution that would cut millions of dollars from the budget and likely eliminate jobs.
As noted in The Assembly:
“Nate Knuffman, the university’s chief finance officer, said he didn’t have the text of the draft resolution when it was introduced as he was presenting a budget and finance update.
Trustee Jim Blaine said he received it at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Ralph Meekins said he only saw it 30 minutes prior to discussing it at the meeting that afternoon. Meekins, who has previously said he does not feel comfortable voting on resolutions given to the board on the day they are considered, voted against the resolution in the committee. The other members voted to advance it to the full board, which passed it on Thursday.”
We appreciate Trustee Meekins’s standard of wanting proper review and consideration time before voting on a resolution – especially in a costly, high-impact circumstance such as this one.
While we realize the University is in a position where difficult budgetary decisions must be made, we also believe it’s important to make those decisions with transparency and input from the community.
Meekins’s objections only further emphasize this point, with one of his major concerns being the resolution’s inclusion of cutting millions of dollars from area studies centers – something he said he’d “been getting emails about left and right.”
This way of operating autocratically outside of the traditional process and with little regard to open communication and transparency has become the rule, rather than the exception, for the Board of Trustees. We’ve covered it at length, and we’re starting to feel like a bit of a broken record here. But unfortunately, it’s because it’s always the same song from this Board.