It isn’t easy to tell how big the cuts for Fiscal Year 2012 will be for Iowa’s Regent Universities.

Last year the university received a total of $1,112,727,648 through five sources of income — state appropriations, federal funds, student fees, other income and sales and services.

This year, the Iowa House has proposed a nine percent decrease in funding, and Governor Branstad has proposed a 7.3 percent decrease. The Senate has not yet released its proposal.

Ellen Rasmussen, associate vice president of budget and planning, said the university is also expecting cuts from the federal level.

At the February meeting of the Iowa Board of Regents, Iowa State proposed a tuition increase of seven percent for students who are residents of Iowa.

Rasmussen said the ‘other income’ category includes grants and contracts. She said that category is usually pretty stable because of the university’s strong past in research.

The last source of income is Sales and Services. Last year no money went toward the general fund operating budget from sales and services, but $40,000 went toward restricted and other funds from sales and services.

Rasmussen said after totaling up the University’s expected incomes, the next step is to look at what kind of increased costs the university is facing.

She said gas prices are going up, and fringe benefits for faculty are always increasing slightly.

Rasmussen also talked about the increasing enrollment numbers.

She said rising numbers bring in more tuition dollars, but residence halls need to be sure there is adequate housing.

“There are more people everywhere. There is a reduction of parking, which puts pressure on them. It’s not pressure in a bad way. It just means there are more people everywhere,” Rasmussen said.

She said it also puts pressure on maintaining infrastructure and recreation resources.

“We want students to have a good first year … We need to make sure there are enough seats in classes and enough space in labs,” Rasmussen said.

She said there are also other things to consider such as paying the city of Ames for fire protection and an increase in utilities.

“The thing to think about when wondering how bad this is … this is deeply concerning because it comes on the heels of three consecutive budget cuts,” Rasmussen said. “On the other hand it could be worse. We could be looking at a huge increase in utilities and benefits. It’s not going down, but we’re not seeing huge spikes. We do need to be thinking about organization and structure.”

She said the reason the Blue Sky Taskforce was created was to look at ways to change organization and structure.

“We will have to find ways to bring activities in line with the resources we have,” Rasmussen said.

The university is now waiting to finalize the expected sources of income for next year. The Iowa Senate was expected to release a budget this week, but did not.

Final enrollment numbers are scheduled to be generated by March 21. Tuition and fees will be discussed again at the March 23 Board of Regents meeting. Indirect cost rates are scheduled to be finalized on March 31.