Extension offices suffering from cutbacks in state funds

National and state budget cuts are having an impact on a local institution. The University of Missouri Outreach and Extension Office is feeling the pinch of the scaled down Missouri budget that has caused a rise in the amount of the postage bill the office must pay, and has led to the office's charging for formerly free guidesheets. "The things cut back in other areas trickle down to here," said Pat Miller, West Central Region Agronomy Specialist. Wayne Prewitt, West Central Region Farm Management Specialist for the University of Missouri Outreach and Extension Office said that the USDA used to pay all of the postage for the Extension Office "The State, I guess, just sent it into the USDA and they paid it. It worked great." However, the USDA has recently started allocating only a certain amount of money to the state, which, in turn, now writes the Extension office a check for postage, which the Extension Office must budget carefully to make it last throughout the year. "Last year we used over $6,000 worth of postage," said Prewitt, but this year, the office will receive just 72 percent of the normal postage budget. This has caused a few cutbacks. Currently the Vernon County Extension Office is updating its mailing list and making sure all the addresses are right, along with asking mailing list members if they would be interested in looking up certain information on the Internet. The response to this has been very good, said Prewitt. "We probably have 50 percent who are opting to go off the Internet," he said. Recipients of this program will receive an e-mail notifying them that the newsletter will be available and offering the Web site's address. In addition, budget concerns are resulting in the office's charging for publications once available for free. "In the past we averaged 15-16,000 publications a year -- the guidesheets. Now, that is a lot of guidesheets." From now on the guidesheets will cost anywhere from 25 cents to more than a dollar, depending on the size of the document. These will also be available on the Internet. Guidesheets and newsletters are available at http://outreach.missouri.edu/vernon/.