WVRHEP Finance Committee
Working Sub-Committee Meeting
Days Inn Conference Center
November 13th, 2000 at 11:00 am

Attendees:  Chuck Conner, Imogene Foster, Billie Hall, Robert Harman (via phone), Hilda R. Heady, Tom Hefner, David Hughes, Tommy Mullins, Margaret Novacich, Jay Prager, Anna Reno, Tom Whittier

Hilda began the meeting with a Legislative update for those who were unable to attend the first meeting.  We will have an update from Doak, Cuppett and Poling on the program review at the November 27th meeting.

The committee spent time discussing the problems and option for budget development that face the program.  They also discussed the possibility of putting all the funds back into the "pot" and developing a funding formula based on fixed costs and variable costs.  There appears to be much interest among the sub-committee members in this plan.

The committee members asked Hilda for a funding history of the RHEP Program.  It is as follows:

Program begins in 1991.  The Legislation is funded at $6 million dollars.  The funding is divided with $2 million to restore funding to Higher Education; $2 million will be marked at the School level for Primary Health Care and the remaining $2 million will be allocated to the communities through the schools.  Then in 1996 the funding increased by $1.5 million; with $1 million going to the communities and $500,000 used to make up lost Kellogg funding at the schools.  This makes the current amounts $4.5 million to the schools and $3 million to the sites.

The sub-Committee then developed the following next steps:

1. The need to develop a final budget request to the Legislature.
2. The need to decide on a process to allocate funding.  Identify variable and fixed expenses by means of the actual expenses for the last four years.  Develop student ratio by the number of students over 4-year period in TRACKER and divide by 2.8 million
3. Evaluate processes for policy recommendations.

There was some discussion of developing a student training expense contingency fund to hold unexpended funds in an escrow account for student training.  This would eliminate the build up of carryover in the communities.

Any plan we follow is going to require buy in from the consortia and communities.  It will be the responsibility of the sub-committee and the Finance Committee to assist in securing the buy in.

Margaret will report back at the next meeting as to whether the sites took into consideration the HEPC $500,000 request in their "wish lists".  The "wish list" budgets along with the budgets to implement the PERD report recommendation total $2 million.  This needs to be reduced.