The Student Recreation Center will have a $72,000 band-aid for its budgetary woes thanks to the Student Senate, which met the rec center part-way on its special request for funding Wednesday night.
Senators expressed reservations with meeting the entire request of $122,184 – which would have taken about half of the money left in the surplus account. Many also questioned whether the rec center should be funded through the surplus account because contracted services and departments do not pay into that account.
After voting down a motion to fund the request from the surplus account (which comes from money allocated to but not spent by student programs), the Senate passed a motion to take the funding out of the separate over-realized account (this comes from extra incidental fees paid when enrollment was higher than anticipated).
The appropriations committee, which was created by the Senate to choose a proposal for spending of the $800,000 in over-realized funds, will not decide on any proposals until the end of the term. For now, the money is still in control of the Student Senate and can be spent without going through that committee, Senate Ombudswoman Natalie Kinsey said.
Physical Activity and Recreational Sports Associate Director Jen de-Vries told the Senate that the money requested would go to help fill the pot of money required to meet an Oregon University System mandate to build a reserve fund for replacing “capitalized equipment,” which is defined as any equipment worth more than $5,000. The rec center is in the third year of a five-year plan to create the fund, de-Vries said.
The rec center needs to be at $143,618, de-Vries said. Half that money is currently in the fund. Another $72,000 is needed for this year and about $51,000 will be needed in 2007-08 to replenish what will be spent this year, de-Vries said.
“I think it’s important to understand that this is meeting an OUS-mandated equipment reserve,” PARS Director Dennis Munroe said. “It’s not something we have a choice about. We’re three years into that mandate and we’ve ignored it for three years. I’m don’t know how long they’re going to permit us to ignore it.”
Sen. Kinsey pointed out that a rule in the incidental fee guidelines requires funding ASUO and EMU state-mandated building reserves. However, Munroe said that discussions with University General Counsel Melinda Grier led him to believe that the rec center does not fall under the definitions of this rule.
Sen. Micah Kosasa, who was one of two senators to vote against the final motion, said he wondered if the rec center is in this position because its services grew faster than its budget.
“We made our PFC budget for this year,” Kosasa, who is the Programs Finance Committee vice-chair, said. “They need to stick to that budget and not another one.”
Sen. Erica Anderson, who also voted against the request, echoed Sen. Kosasa’s concerns. She said that the rec center is not following the budget laid out for it by the PFC.
“If we give you this money, we’re saying that’s OK,” she said.
Requests for funding from the over-realized accounts must be one-time needs and not on-going issues, as several senators pointed out. Munroe and de-Vries said that Wednesday’s request would fill the pot this one time and future money for the reserve fund would be part of the operating budget (and future budget requests).
According to the incidental fee guidelines, the over-realized fund must meet five criteria: They must address one-time, non-recurring expenses; must benefit large groups of students or support projects with broad student support; address issues of an emergency nature that impact students; respond to unique targets of opportunity where investment of resources would result in savings of student fees and would reduce future fee collections.
Senate Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg said he had been opposed to the request at first but during discussion decided that providing the funding was important.
“This is as big of an emergency as we’re going to get,” he said. “Sure, we could talk about management and whatnot, but we are students and we use it. This has a massive impact on the campus.”
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Surplus account vs. over-realized fund. What’s the difference?
The Student Senate Wednesday night failed a motion to give the Rec Center $72,000 from the Senate surplus account. The money in this account comes from rollover money that is not spent by student groups. Senators argued that this account was inappropriate because departments such as the Rec Center do not pay into the surplus account.
However, the Senate passed a motion to fund the same $72,000 from the over-realized account, which exists because in the past, the size of the incidental fee has been predicted based on projected enrollment. When more students enroll than expected, extra money went into an account. The Rec Center does fall under the guidelines of being able to receive money from this account.
According to the ASUO bylaws, requests from the over-realized account must meet the following requirements:
1) Address one-time, non-recurring expenses for which other funding sources are not available or are inappropriate;
2) Benefit large groups of students or to support projects with a broad base of student support;
3) Address issues of an emergency nature that have an impact on students;
4) Respond to special or unique targets of opportunity, where investment of resources will result in substantial savings of student fees;
5) Reduction of fee collections. Currently enrolled students, ASUO recognized student groups and any programs or departments funded as a supplement to the following year’s fee allocations or as a source for student-recommended fees are eligible to request and receive an allocation of over-realized funds.