The University of Maine System announced Monday that it is cutting its budget by $2.7 million during the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. These savings will be reallocated to the universities themselves, UMS Chancellor Terrence MacTaggart said at Monday’s meeting, according to a press release.

“Like virtually all state-supported entities, the University of Maine System has been struggling to maintain affordable, high quality programs and services in a time of growing demands and declining resources,” MacTaggart said. He added that these cuts are designed to protect academic quality and maintain affordability at the various UMS campuses.

In order to achieve these objectives, UMS assessed “the values, importance and priority of functions, programs and services provided through the system’s central office; the efficiency and effectiveness of those functions, programs and services; and ways to reduce operating costs through elimination, reallocation, and-or consolidation of positions, duties and operations,” according to the press release.

“We continue to seek ways to reduce administrative costs and to direct those savings to high-priority programs and services at the university level,” MacTaggart said. “As a consequence of these cuts, aspects of centralized support services definitely will be affected.”

“Most of these cost savings are going to be made within operating budgets or by not moving forward with things that we would normally spend on,” John Diamond, a UMS spokesman, said. Diamond added that this was the reason MacTaggart offered to take on the duty of finding someone to take over his position at the end of the year. In previous years, UMS would have hired a professional to do a national recruitment search for the next chancellor, but MacTaggart agreed to take on the task so the system could save that money.

Diamond explained that about $313,000 out of the $2.7 million will come from the elimination and consolidation of five full-time and part-time positions in the chancellor’s office. The remainder of the cuts will come in areas “that are run by the central office of the system.” These include procurement services, human resources and information technologies.

UMS expects to achieve the $2.7 million in cuts by June 30, 2008, Diamond said.