The EMU Board of Directors and the Student Senate have pushed back the EMU’s budgeting process in an effort to make campus radio station KWVA an EMU-funded group, a move that would give the station more long-term financial stability.
KWVA General Manager Charlotte Nisser said the ASUO Programs Finance Committee, which currently sets the radio station’s budget every year, causes the federally licensed radio station to have to fight for funding every year. When equipment breaks, the station must request money from the Senate to repair it, while still meeting the federal government’s requirement to broadcast 24 hours a day.
KWVA said the Senate may not understand the importance of the funding or may not have the money to disperse.
The EMU Board and the Student Senate voted Wednesday to extend the due date for the EMU budget benchmark, which is the increase or decrease in proposed budget since last year.
According to the Green Tape Notebook, the student government’s rules and regulations guide, the EMU’s incidental fee portion of its budget can’t exceed a 7 percent increase.
Currently, the EMU budget is already breaking the 7-percent barrier because it is slated to reach $389,527, or an increase of 10.4 percent. KWVA would add an extra $65,000.
The increases are so dramatic, EMU Director of Student Activities Gregg Lobisser said, because the University didn’t know until about September that the two-year salary freezes had been defrosted.
“The figures related to classified salary increases were not made public probably until nearly Sept. 1, and none of that was available earlier in the year,” when KWVA and the EMU had been speculating about a transfer, Lobisser said.
The EMU Board and the Senate extended the deadline by four hours in an effort to reduce the budget enough to fit KWVA in.
The EMU Board decided that it was too soon to endorse the EMU Budget Committee’s proposal of adding KWVA as an EMU-funded program because the current budget exceeds the increase limit.
EMU Director Dusty Miller asked for more time, up to two weeks, to rework the budget.
“Our challenge is to look at these, go back, and in our best efforts, come back to you with what we can do to change these numbers,” Miller said Wednesday. The board will probably grant KWVA’s entry into the EMU budget if Miller can get the benchmark increase below 7 percent.
“A lot of us thought it might be a good idea” to approve the KWVA on Wednesday, “but we just wanted some more information to back it up,” said EMU Budget Committee Chair Heidi Zlatek.
The EMU Board will now hold two back-to-back meetings after the four-hour extension was granted at Wednesday’s meeting. One meeting will consist of discussions over the EMU benchmark. The second meeting will consist of a vote to add or deny KWVA status as an EMU-funded program. The decision and budget will still be presented on time to Student Senate on Nov. 2, but some EMU Board members question if enough time has been allotted.
EMU Board member Miles Rost, the only one to vote against the four-hour extension, said the decision needs to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly, and four hours is not enough time for such an investigation.
“If we cannot get the adequate time to be able to do something correctly and get it done with correctly, we’re going to have errors down the road three, four, five years,” Rost said. “It’s going to be a problem. It’s going to be a mess.”
The EMU board took the advice of Stephanie Erickson, Senate president and EMU Board member, after she said it’s “dangerous to postpone the benchmark due dates” because it could push the Senate’s benchmark hearing back into Dead Week if the ASUO Executive vetoes the proposal.
The Student Senate must have benchmarks for each major program complete by Nov. 30. Senate will still vote on the proposal on Nov. 9.
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