This is particularly painful after we have made significant financial investments in their development. Even though Senate Bill 345's funding model is different for Washburn and the other four-year institutions, we urge you ensure that sufficient resources are available for Washburn University to offer comparable increases in faculty compensation with our sister institutions. Less than 20 percent of Washburn's funding comes from State of Kansas resources. Funding plans that apply a fixed percentage to state funding may seem fair, but in fact are not equitable. Clearly, a percentage increase on 20 percent of the operating budget will not provide for competitive faculty compensation programs.
State universities apply that same percentage increase to almost all of their operating budget.
We urge you to fund Washburn's salary program to the same level as our sister universities and not simply apply percentages. We are very appreciative of the action taken by the legislature last session to change the local funding component of the Washburn budget. The elimination of 15 mills of property tax in the city of Topeka for the general and benefit fund and the implementation of the sales tax on a county wide basis is most beneficial. This change in the funding mechanism obviously expands the local tax support base to include those persons living outside the county who shop locally and pay the sales tax. Concomitantly, it permitted the elimination of the out of district tuition for all those townships within Shawnee County which provided obvious relief to their strained budgets.