Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 8

Dance like it hurts,
Love like you need money,
Work when people are watching.
      - Scott (Dilbert) Adams

8. I can create a maintenance budget. 

Administrators understand maintenance. They regularly budget for replacing roofs, tuck-pointing brick work, and resurfacing parking lots. They understand why windows, furnaces, and pencil sharpeners all need to be replaced now and again.

What these fine folks don’t always understand is that library collections and instructional technology need be  maintained as well. Use the following formula with your collection, share the results with your budget people, and see if it makes a difference.

Doug's Magic? Formula for a Maintenance Budget

 Here's one way to calculate what funds you should be spending to keep your resources up-to-date:

Maintenance budget = replacement rate X total number of items X average cost
(replacement rate = 100%/number of years in the life span of material)

Examples:

If a school has 50 DVD players which cost $100 each and have a life span of 10 years,

   then the maintenance budget for VCRs should be 10% X 50 X $100 or $500.

If a media center has 15,000 volumes with an average cost of $14 per volume with an average life of a book at 20 years,

            then the maintenance budget should be 5%* X 15,000 X $14 or $10500.

(*Remember the replacement rate is 100%/life span or 1.00/20 or 5%)

Here's one for you to try:

A school has 80 computers with a life span of 5 years. The average replacement cost of a computer is $800. How much should be spent each year to maintain the computers?

Replacement rate =   1.00/ _______ years

Maintenance = ___________  X ____________________  X ____________________

                                  Replacement rate            Total number of items                     Average cost of an item

or

$_________________ Maintenance budget.