High Heating Costs May Cause Deficit

A project $400,000 increase in heating costs over last year could cause a deficit in this year's budget, Robert E. Kaufmann '62, associate dean for finance and administration, said yesterday.

Heating costs for Houses and other dormitories have risen approximately $200,000 this year, while heating costs for offices, classrooms, laboratories and other facilities have remained constant, he said.

Harvard has been using between 25 and 30 per cent more fuel for heating purposes this winter than last, Kaufmann said. "This has made an impact on this year's budget," he added.

"The problem is not so much a change in cost as a change in consumption," Kaufmann said. "If we have a warm February and March, then we may offset this winter's consumption. But nobody's predicting that to happen," he said.

Kaufmann said he could not predict whether the increased heating costs will affect tuition.

"There's still some chance that we may have a small surplus in the budget," Kaufmann said. "We've had surprises on both sides of the ledger, and so far the budget is still balanced."

University officials hope that income generated by fundraising may cancel out the heating costs and produce a surplus, he added.

"It's not consoling to run a budget when things you can't control, such as the weather, determine whether you'll have a surplus or a deficit. It's rather precarious," Kaufmann said.

J. Lawrence Joyce, director of Buildings and Grounds, said yesterday the University is attempting to save fuel by compiling classroom usage schedules.

The schedules are fed into a Buildings and Grounds computer in the basement of the Science Center, which controls classroom temperature throughout the University, he said.

"There are isolated cases in which, because of thermostat location and other factors, the temperature is not under control," Joyce said. "But overall, there has been effective temperature control this year."

Laboratories are particularly hard to heat, Richard G. Leahy, associate dean for resources and planning, said yesterday. Laboratories use more energy because their ventilation fans blow out just-heated air.