The final meeting for the year, preceded by the annual celebration to mark 25 years of service by members of the general staff. Yours truly was among this year's recipients. Several other members of Senate attended and mixed with recipients, their friends and families.
The Senate meeting proper endorsed the University's Strategic Plan for 2007-11, the 2007 Equity and Diversity Plan, and the St Lucia Site Development Plan. The latter preserves the Great Court precinct and existing green areas and foreshadows redevelopment of some existing building sites in the years to come, to provide for growth. A new building will eventually go up in front of the Mayne Centre (but not in front of Forgan Smith), and a carpark will be built under the tennis courts.
Senate also approved the University's budget for 2007, which is pretty much a continuation of how things were done in 2006. Income for 2007 is up 8.6% but expenditure is up 16.4%. The resulting deficit, funded from cash reserves, arises primarily out of planned investment in capital infrastructure. To his credit, the elected academic staff representative, Dr Andrew Bonnell, pointed out that many Faculties and Schools are on very tight budgets and some, including my own, are undergoing restructuring to deal with financial exigency. A number of job losses are evident. He asked the Finance Committee (which, of course, no longer has any elected staff representatives) to bear this in mind when framing budgets heavy on building programs.
Other business was relatively routine in nature, or confidential at this stage (no alarm bells ringing), except for the Report of the Paid Parking Scheme - see below.
I also asked about preparations for the UQ Centenary in 2009-10. The V-C foreshadowed a report to Senate at the second meeting of 2007.
Well, here we go again. The price of red and blue permits is going up 20% in 2007. I spoke on the matter, and for what I had to say, click here.
My annually-updated history of permit charge increases is accessible via a link from my Parking Fees page.
Elected academic staff representative, Dr Andrew Bonnell, spoke in support of my statement.
The response from the Vice-Chancellor was that parking fees are low compared to other 'cities'. Presumably he's referring to central business districts - an anomalous comparison, particularly when you consider the much more ready availability of public transport (eg trains) in the CBD compared to a bend in the river several kilometres away.
The DVC(International & Development), who has responsibility for parking, said that the cost was equivalent to a cup of coffee a day. He did, however, acknowledge that some of my points about striking a balance might be worth consideration.
As you'll see from my speech on the matter, I'm taking a motion to the next Senate meeting. To help me get it right, tell me here what you think.
