After weeks of debate over a bill that would take oversight of the Student Recreation Center budget out of the hands of the Programs Finance Committee, the Senate held a rare dead week meeting and voted unanimously to pass the bill.
Senate Bill 28 would transfer funding of the rec center budget (which will be merged with the Rec Sports budget) away from the student incidental fee.
This bill is entirely separate from the ballot initiative rec center representatives have been considering for the spring election.
Physical Activity and Recreational Sports Director Dennis Munroe said now that the Senate has passed the bill, rec center representatives do not know how the bill would work in conjunction with a ballot initiative planned for the ASUO elections, or if they will even submit the initiative at all.
Rather than the incidental fee, funding would instead come from an increase to the existing recreation center fee and the budget would be overseen not by the PFC but by the Student Recreation Center Advisory Board. Currently, each student pays $15.25 per term to pay off the bond debt from building the rec center. Students pay an additional $21.50 per term -the combined cost of the rec center and rec sports fees. The PFC allocated $23.64 per student per term for the combined budgets in the 2007-08 academic year.
Munroe said it is important to remember that this amount is not enough to keep the rec center out of the red.
Munroe said it would cost $28.03 per student per term to balance the combined budgets. No matter how the oversight of the budget works, without additional funding, the rec center will still need to continue dipping into rapidly depleting emergency reserves or look at other ways to cut costs.
“If we had to go into those reserves a bit more, we would work hard with our student advisory board and have them help us (and) advise us as to whether we continue to use those, or if we save it and cut services,” he said. “That’s going to be a hard decision.”
If the bill takes effect, the money that normally comes out of the incidental fee will be combined with the existing $15.25 fee to create one “institutional” fee for the rec center. Munroe said that a “very rough estimate” is that this newly combined fee would be around $45 per student per term beginning in the 2008-09 academic year.
The Student Recreation Center Advisory Board would prepare the 2008-09 budget next year if the bill takes effect. Munroe said at some point, the rec center will have to come up with a sustainable budget.
“We will still be very responsible about limiting growth, but we will at least have a means by which we will be able to cover what we’re required by law to pay,” he said. “We’ll have to minimally increase by that amount each year.”
The rec center currently represents the PFC’s largest budget. When the rec center’s (and other departments’) budgetary needs surpass caps on incidental fee growth set by the Senate, the PFC has no choice but to fund the mandatory reserve funds and wage increases for departments, leaving less money for programs.
Munroe said the combined Programs Finance Committee allocation for the rec center/rec sports budget for the 2007-08 school year is $1,253,678.
Because the money would come from an institutional fee instead of the incidental fee, the incidental fee would be lower, Munroe said, and student programs would no longer be in “competition” with the rec center budget. The incidental fee is $202 per term.
“That’s the terribly disappointing part of this and … we frankly feel awful about ourselves,” Munroe said. “In order to pay what we’re required by law to pay, student groups have to suffer. We’re not insensitive to that by any means, we just don’t have a choice.”
If the bill takes effect – it must first be approved by the ASUO Constitution Court – the new fee would be implemented in the 2008-09 school year. The budget for that year would be created during the 2007-08 school year.
Student Senate Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg said that while he has not been present at talks with the administration about the rec center budget, he has been told the administration wanted to leave any action on the rec center to the Senate.
Rosenberg said passing the bill is the first step in sending the message that the Senate wants the administration to take action on this matter.
“We passed this in order to open up a channel of communication with the administration,” Rosenberg said.
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