The EMU Board of Directors Budget Committee reached an impasse at Tuesday night’s meeting regarding the best way to fund a full-time staff position for the UO Cultural Forum.
For two hours, committee members examined budget line items, crunched numbers and debated possible funding cuts, but could not agree on how to fund the Cultural Forum staff position. The committee hit a wall and decided to adjourn for the evening to give members time away from the table.
At the beginning of the meeting, members debated whether to allow for growth in EMU programs because of the tight fiscal future of the University. However, the committee quickly reached a consensus to put a top priority on Cultural Forum’s funding for the 2003-04 school year.
EMU Board Chairwoman Christa Shively advocated funding the needed staff position in the Cultural Forum for $13,204. However, Budget Committee Chairwoman Mle Gross said she was not comfortable with slicing more than $1300 out of other EMU programs’ budgets.
The committee had $5,501 left to allocate under its maximum benchmark for the EMU, and debated how to acquire the rest of the funding needed for Cultural Forum. One suggested cut came from Justina Parsons-Bernstein, coordinator for Cultural Forum, who offered up the $1,000 the group had been allotted for professional development.
Several other budget cut suggestions were made — so many, in fact, the committee became bogged down while discussing the most responsible way to trim down programs’ budgets. One suggestion would have generated a savings of $2,500 by scaling back the funding for work-study positions in the EMU Administration office. Members said another $2,000 could be taken out of global advertising in the Administration budget.
Budget Committee member Mark Watson suggested instituting a 1 percent or 2 percent decrease in every program’s budget — with the exception of The Break and EMU Food Services, because they are not funded by student incidental fees — and let the budget managers decide where to take the cut. But Brenda Tincher, another committee member, said even though an across-the-board cut would be a democratic solution, budget managers had already directed the board where to take 2 percent out of their budgets for the 2003-04 school year. She argued the committee should follow the budget managers’ individual suggestions rather than arbitrarily decide on an across-the-board budget cut.
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