Non-unionized employees who meet or exceed expectations at the College will receive a 1 percent increase to their base salaries for the 2011 fiscal year, Provost Carol Folt and Senior Vice President Steven Kadish announced in an e-mail to the Dartmouth community on Friday. The increase marks the end of a salary freeze that the College introduced for the 2010 fiscal year.
"While the amount is small, it is intended to acknowledge the importance of growing base pay and to provide some relief for cost of living expenses," the e-mail said.
Folt and Kadish also announced that they have a plan that will "eliminate the $54 million budget gap predicted for fiscal year 2011," the e-mail said. More than 80 percent of the projected budget gap through fiscal year 2014 has been resolved, Kadish said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth.
"We regret not having an announcement on pay increases earlier, but it was critical to understand the year-end savings and revenue trends," the e-mail said.
Employees who are members of the Service Employees International Union Local 560 will vote on Aug. 6 whether to accept a tentative agreement regarding successor contracts, Earl Sweet, president of SEIU Local 560, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
An agreement has already been approved by theatrical employees at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, according to the e-mail, though the details of their arrangement were not included in the e-mail.
The increase in wage and salary rates for non-union employees will go into effect Oct. 1, and employees will also receive a supplemental payment that will be the equivalent of an increase from July through September, according to the e-mail.
The provost, vice presidents, and deans of the College will also have access to a small fund to reward employees' "exceptional performance" at their discretion, the e-mail said.
The salary increase follows the recent announcement that Dartmouth reached a $5.6 million surplus in the projected budget for the 2010 fiscal year, Kadish said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth. While the College of Arts and Sciences is expected to break even, the sum of the professional schools' budgets will likely account for a "modest" surplus, he said.
Original budget projections, however, showed a $2.5 million deficit for the year, The Dartmouth previously reported. Sweet said that the announced surplus was "bewildering."
"The College was saying how transparent they were being, and from what my understanding was, they were in a real problem with their budget," he said. "It was quite shocking when they found that it was a $5 million surplus."
Sweet said he has not yet spoken with any College officials regarding the surplus.
"I'm not sure how to respond to that at this point," he said.
