Student senators congratulated the committee that negotiates the number of student tickets available for home athletic events Wednesday night for keeping budget increases below the suggested limit.
The Athletic Department Finance Committee increased its 2007-08 budget by 3 percent over current levels to $1,414,643.
Before contract negotiations with the Athletic Department began, the Senate gave the ADFC a 7 percent benchmark budget increase for a season in which there will be one extra home football game.
“That was a huge thing to overcome because it would have been an enormous increase to our budget,” ADFC Chairman Kyle McKenzie said.
McKenzie said the ADFC began to look at no-show factors for games and realized for some games this past season, up to 1,000 students picked up tickets and then did not show up.
The budget for next season reduces the number of student tickets for home football games that take place before school starts and for the Washington State and Arizona State games. There will be one fewer section of student seats for these games, but there will be the full number of tickets (5,700) for the games against California, USC and Oregon State University .
McKenzie said this was the best way to keep the full number of tickets for popular games without having a huge budget increase.
“I’m really excited about the budget,” Sen. Jen Lleras said. “It’s something we can really look at and say we know where the tough choices had to be made.”
Senators did express some concern over the ADFC’s decision to establish a reserve fund of money for years in which there are extra home games. The ADFC wanted to have a pool of money so that it would not have to ask for huge increases in years that have extra games, McKenzie said.
“It’s a way to stabilize our budget in upcoming years,” McKenzie said. “This year we have seven games and say the next year we have six, we still fund it at the seven game level, leaving that one game gap so that in the future so that if we have seven games we can pay for that.”
Despite some concern over keeping a pool of money around for years without spending it, the Senate eventually passed the budget by a vote of 12-0-4. The senators who serve on the ADFC abstained from the vote.
The Senate also discussed a bill that if passed, would take the Student Recreation Center budget out of the hands of the Programs Finance Committee and transfer it to the administration. The bill would create a rec center fee, separate from the incidental fee and give more oversight to the rec center advisory board.
Student Senate President Sara Hamilton said that taking the rec center fee out of the incidental fee would free up money that has to be taken away from student groups to fund the rec center budget.
“What you have to deal with is the fact that programs always suffer because contracts and departments are a lot more difficult to say no to,” Sen. Jacob Daniels said. “The rate the rec center’s budget is growing almost makes it its own entity.”
Although some senators expressed concern with taking control of a student fee out of the hands of the ASUO, the Senate voted to send the bill to the Senate Rules Committee for review.
Another Senate bill which would establish a method of allowing groups to use a type of reserve account to fund events and then replenish it with revenue from that event was also sent to committee for review.
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