Last year, the Student Recreation Center’s perpetual debt was revealed during Programs Finance Committee budget hearings, even though it has been in debt since it opened in 1999. Traditionally funded through student fees, in fall 2007 the University administration decided an institutional fee would fund the rec center instead.
Student oversight of the rec center budget now falls to an advisory committee, which has existed since the rec center opened, but that at least one member has publicly criticized as lacking any real power.
Despite student government efforts to fill the rec center’s debt last year, it will end the fiscal year with a projected $100,000 deficit.
With no incidental fee funding coming next year, starting in July the rec center will rely on an institutional fee that has not yet been approved by the Oregon University System although administrators have been assured of its approval, Vice President for Finance and Administration Frances Dyke said.
Throughout this entire process, the rec center’s budget has sat on the fault line of student government politics. While one side sees a student-funded multimillion-dollar budget slipping away from student control, others see a budget and an organization too complex for students to manage.
Vice President of Student Affairs Robin Holmes, who made the decision to remove the rec center from the incidental fee, said that students can only get a snapshot of a budget during a 10-minute presentation to the PFC. An advisory board can spend a year learning a budget, she said.
Holmes said the University’s general counsel advised her that moving the rec center’s funding was “something we are allowed to do.”
The Student Recreation Center Advisory Board now has the only student oversight of the center’s budget.
“We still haven’t had budget training,” said

Sen. Kate Jones, who sits on the board. She said the meetings have not followed Oregon Public Meetings Law, because advisory boards are not governing bodies.
“The discussion last time was whether and who of the public we would allow to speak,” Jones told senators last week.
She said the board’s chairman, Adam Ohlson, had said any speakers should be people who are not politically powerful like ASUO President Emily McLain.
Ohlson, however, disputed every one of Jones’ claims. He said the board had received budget training that was probably “more personal” than senators get. “I can say that we are absolutely qualified,” to determine the rec center’s budget, Ohlson said.
“We don’t have discussions about who gets to come and talk,” he said. “The point that I was making was that if people want to come and talk to our board that’s fine, but they have to give us notice.” McLain came to a meeting after Jones sent her a text message saying the board might approve a 38 percent increase in student fees.
Ohlson said “it never in the past made sense that people would come to our meeting because it’s not a governing board, it’s an advisory board.” He also said the University’s general counsel advised the board that they do not have to follow public meeting laws.
Then-Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer ruled June 27, 1984, that student government and its committees, because of its power to “recommend incidental fee assessments and allocations to the Board of Higher Education,” are governing bodies subject to public meeting law.
Director of Physical Education and Recreation Dennis Munroe said there is an open invitation for any student to view the rec center’s budget.
“It’s disheartening to me that some would feel we have been less than transparent,” Munroe said. “We’ve done everything that we know to do to be transparent.”

A history of ‘perpetual debt’

Munroe maintains the rec center’s troubles stem from never completing the project and it costing more than anyone expected.
Munroe said in the 1970s many universities started building recreation centers to meet students’ needs outside the classroom, recognizing the value of such places in recruiting and retaining students. Oregon didn’t consider such a facility until 1995, when students passed a ballot measure to construct the rec center.
Students approved a fee of $23 per student per term. Of that, $15.25 would go toward paying off a $10 million bond debt and the rest would go toward operating expenses. The bond is set to retire in 2027.
“It was a good educated guess,” Munroe said.
In 1997, students began paying the fee, resulting in a cash reserve. The budget was balanced from this reserve every year, unbeknownst to the advisory board or the ASUO.
“If I have any regret it’s that we didn’t say ‘time out,’” and meet with student leaders from the beginning, Munroe said.
Munroe said he didn’t want to run to students with a message of panic while sitting on a pile of cash.
He said the rec center has always drawn more students than anticipated, and administrators and accountants waited for the day the building would bring in as much as it spent.
That day hasn’t come.
“Two years ago we started having conversations I wish we’d started having six or seven years ago,” he said.
The Programs Finance Committee gave the rec center increases through the years, but never enough to close the gap in the budget.
Last year, the Student Senate gave $72,000 in surplus money to replenish the mandatory reserves that had been used to balance the budget, and $118,000 in over-realized funds to help pay the rec center’s debt for the year.
“It fills the deficit for one year,” Munroe said, “but it doesn’t provide for the next year’s deficit.”
The ASUO has no records of the rec center’s previous debt. Those numbers were never provided to the ASUO, accountant Lynn Giordano said.

Proposed budget for next year

A document obtained by the Emerald shows a proposed budget for the rec center for next year with an increase of $8.95 in student fees. The increase would be in addition to the $15.25 for paying off bond debt and the current slice of the incidental fee that goes to the rec center, which is $23.64.
ASUO Finance Coordinator Matt Rose, who sits on the rec center’s advisory board, said he would not support such an increase.
“I’m looking at $2.37 per term, roughly,” which he said would put the rec center on “a comfortable glide path” toward paying its debt, but would not provide for any of the extras the proposal includes.
Those items include $46,000 for an assistant facilities manager position, $21,000 for a half-time marketing position, $30,000 for student labor in a yet-to-be-built weight room, $40,000 for students to man the back door of the building and $50,000 for a “professional staff equity increase.”
“It’s not something we’re asking for,” Munroe said when asked about the increases. “I would label it a dream list.”
He said the list was created in response to requests that the rec center define and alert the advisory board of its needs.
Jones said she was unaware of any “wish list” and had been told the increases were necessary.
Munroe said since the last meeting of the advisory board, he decided the rec center can absorb the cost of student labor in a new weight room, if building one is approved by the Student Building Fee Advisory Committee.
He said the assistant facilities manager position is “important and I would love to be able to fund it.” He said the position not being filled “impacts the lives” of staff members who are performing extra duties, but he understands that funding the position would widen the center’s deficit.
“I’m beginning to think that to address the issue in its entirety, it would take some other attention to it another year,” such as another ballot measure or major source of f
unding, he said.
Munroe said he would listen to what the advisory board has to say.
“My role right now is to listen to the advisory board, and I have a decision to make once I get that advice.”

Students disagree on student control

The fate of the rec center has been a divisive issue in the ASUO. President McLain said she has always disagreed with removing the budget from the incidental fee, and thus the oversight that comes with it.
“All of the services on the incidental fee became part of the incidental fee for a reason,” McLain said, which was because students recognized a need and decided to fill it.
Not everyone agrees.
Sara Hamilton, former Student Senate president and McLain’s rival for the ASUO presidency last year, supported moving rec center funding.
Hamilton said the rec center grew at a faster rate than the ASUO could sustain, and its presence in the PFC’s budgeting process took money away from student groups.
“The fact is that it is still in student control. Students have the last say,” she said.
Rose, who sits on the board, said members have a vote on the budget “in theory.”
“They create a recommendation which would then go to Robin Holmes, who would then approve it,” he said.
McLain said there should be an audit of all of the rec center’s finances, which Sen. Billy Hatch has also advocated this year.
“I think there’s obviously a big difference between the incidental fee and an administration-approved fee,” McLain said. She noted that the incidental fee cannot increase more than 7 percent each year, and other fees can. (Holmes cited this as a reason for separating the rec center.)
“It also takes away student governance and student control,” McLain said.
Hamilton’s response: “Student control is not three people sitting in Suite 4, micro-managing professional organizations.” Suite 4 is the location of the ASUO office.
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