The Board of Regents will act on several proposals dealing with next year’s budget at its Thursday meeting.

The Regents, who will be meeting Wednesday and Thursday at Springfield’s Sangamon State University, are expected to approve $262 million in funding requests for the three Regency schools.

The total request is up $15.7 million or 6.4 percent over fiscal year 1992. This is a departure from requests of previous years which often asked for double-digit percentage increases.

NIU’s piece of the $15.7 million pie is about $6.3 million, an increase of 6.3 percent. NIU’s total request for next year stands at $130 million.

The requests include an $11 million increase in personal service funding for the Regency system. NIU personal services money would increase by about $5.5 million or 5.8 percent.

The chancellor’s report states the $11 million will be “sufficient to provide average salary increases of 6 percent to faculty and staff to offset past and anticipated losses of purchasing power and to restore competitiveness in relation to comparison groups.”

The Regents are likely to approve capital appropriation requests for the Regency system which total about $104 million.

The capital appropriation will go to various projects around campus, like making NIU handicapped-accessible.

A Regents report stated, “In order to comply with the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, NIU will provide handicapped access to 22 major academic buildings.” The appropriation request for this totals $1.7 million.

NIU’s Rockford Education Center construction will require $5.4 million. NIU serves 1,100 to 1,800 students each year in Rockford.

Also on the bill once again this year is a request for $6 million in equipment for NIU’s proposed engineering building which remains on hold.