Despite having what some board members describe as inadequate information to make a decision, the Student Recreation Center Advisory Board may decide as soon as tonight on a suggested increase in student fees for 2008-09 to support the indebted rec center.
Board members have repeatedly asked for more information from rec center administrators, and were provided with a line-item breakdown of the budget last week, after Sen. Billy Hatch requested it at the last budget meeting on Feb. 26.
Hatch is not a member of the advisory board, but has pursued information on the rec center’s finances from Director Dennis Munroe, rec center accountant Sue Wieseke and Robin Holmes, the University’s vice president of student affairs.
“It’s partially useful,” advisory board member Matt Rose said of the line-item budget. “It gives half of the picture.”
Rose, who is also the ASUO’s finance coordinator, said the information is useful because it shows a breakdown of the funds in each portion of the budget. The advisory board does not have the same information for previous years to compare how much certain items have increased over time.
“Usually line-item breakdowns without context aren’t particularly helpful,” Sen. Kate Jones said. “I really don’t know that having a line-item breakdown now will spark discussion.”
Hatch has been so persistent in his quest for information that he received a sharp e-mail response from Munroe on March 4.
“It is irresponsible for administrators and accountants to be spending so much of our time trying to respond to request after request for information,” Munroe wrote. “The levels of detail in your and others requests this year exceed anything ever before. You have to trust that professionals have been hired to do this work who are educated, trained, and dedicated to students.”
Munroe ended the e-mail by telling Hatch that the rec center professional staff “have been distracted enough and must get back to the business of delivering programs, services and facilities to students.”
Student leaders were more than upset with the e-mail and took their complaints to Holmes. Munroe later apologized to Hatch and hugged him during a meeting with the ASUO executive, Rose and Holmes, Hatch said.
Wieseke sent Hatch much more detailed information about the rec center’s budget than the advisory board had seen. The information indicated that the center would have a deficit of more than $100,000 higher than current estimates of the rec center’s 2008-09 deficit. The current budget estimates by the end of next year the rec center’s deficit will total more than $20,000.
Munroe later said the information was a worksheet of a possible scenario that was discarded by the board “in light of the level of funding it would require.” The scenario included a new coordinator position and possible salary increases for unclassified staff.
At the advisory board’s last budget meeting, most members said they would recommend an increase of 10 to 12 percent. The rec center’s current share of the incidental fee equals $23.64 per student per term. A 10 percent increase would bring the fee to $26 per student per term next year.
Students also pay $15.25 a term to the rec center’s bond debt.
“I can’t speak for the board but do think they may be close to making a recommendation,” Munroe wrote in an e-mail on Monday.
Rose and Jones have consistently said they will not support any increase in student fees higher than 10 percent.
Munroe has said a 19 percent increase would close the gap in the center’s budget that has existed since it opened, and would also allow the center to continue providing its current level of service.
At the last meeting of the advisory board, Chairman Adam Ohlson asked each member how much of an increase would be acceptable. While most said an increase of 10 to 12 percent would be reasonable, several said they and their friends were willing to pay more.
“I haven’t gotten a single reason on why we should go higher besides, ‘my friends would pay that,’” Rose said. He questioned how representative members of the advisory board and “their friends” were of all students.
“If everyone on the rec center board talked to a hundred people, we might reach the proportion we need” for a representative sample, Rose said.
Vice Chairman Peter Hoherd said he would not want the fee to increase more than 10 percent in a phone interview on Monday. He said an increase of 6 or 7 percent would be ideal for students, but 10 percent would help the rec center meet its needs.
Hoherd is in charge of training referees in intramural sports. He said he felt the center’s budget process had been “consistent and transparent.”
“We were given information and we were given the opportunity to ask questions,” he said. For anyone who disagreed, he said “maybe they didn’t analyze the data hard enough or maybe they didn’t understand the information.”
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