After receiving a recommendation from ASUO Senate not to increase its budget, the Athletic and Contracts Finance Committee will be forced to look for alternatives in its current contracts with its two largest budgets: Lane Transit District and the athletic department.
At last Wednesday’s Senate meeting, Senate recommended the committee not exceed 0 percent growth, despite the committee’s request for a 7 percent increase — the maximum increase a department can ask for according to Oregon University System rules.
“The 0 percent benchmark was meant as the opportunity to send a message not only to students, but also to our contractors that we don’t have a lot of room for growth this year, across the board,” ASUO President Emma Kallaway said. Senators made it clear at the meeting that being aggressive with these two contracts was important in keeping the incidental fee low. This goal is shared by the members of the ACFC.
ACFC Chair Sen. Alex McCafferty said he is up to the challenge.
“LTD is really what I want to focus on first. Even though the athletic department is the largest budget, LTD is the one we need to find the solution for,” he said. “We really wanted to send a message to LTD, and I fully agree with that message.”
To maintain the LTD contract as is, the budget would require an increase of 23 percent, Sen. Hailey Sheldon said. Sheldon is on the ACFC and is the member assigned to maintain and monitor the ASUO contract with LTD.
“I think that it’s ambitious and excellent, and I hope we can fulfill it,” she said.
Sheldon said there are about three options she is considering to cut costs in terms of bus passes: to eliminate the contract and no longer have free bus service, to have the incidental fee and individual students each pay for half the cost and maintain the same service, and to share the cost with administration.
“LTD keeps negotiations tough,” McCafferty said. “Hopefully, we will get administration more involved. At the negotiation table, the mere physical presence would add weight to our side.”
ACFC decides yearly budgets during winter term through a series of budget hearings, so budget talk right now “is all conjecture, we’re right at the very beginning of the road,” Sheldon said.
Options in altering the contract with the athletic department, which currently has a $1.5 million budget, are somewhat similar. McCafferty, who is in his third year of working with the Athletic Department, said the department has always been amenable to student voice.
The options on the table, he said, are to remove the budget completely; keep the budget the same, which would give students 5,400 more tickets because there are fewer home games next year; or to practice a split-cost model, charging students $10 to their student accounts each time they electronically claim a ticket.
“That will cut the athletic department budget in half, which will mean big saving for students in terms of the incidental fee,” he said.
Kallaway, however, is concerned that the benchmark may not allow enough breathing room in terms of these negotiations.
“My concern is that it doesn’t allow for enough conversation to happen,” Kallaway said. “Seven percent wouldn’t even allow all of the contracts to exist at their current service level.”
The current service level is determined by taking the current cost of the existing service and factoring in estimated inflation to predict the cost of the same service, without growth, for the next year.
Kallaway said that a comforting fact in the equation is that, despite student disagreement about the ways the ASUO spends the incidental fee, budget talks usually result in a good balance.
“Every student takes the pieces of the incidental fee that are useful to them,” she said. “Some may use the EMU and some ride the bus, or maybe some go to athletic games and some participate in student programs,” creating what she calls “their own incidental fee package.”
By the numbers: budgets
2008-09 school year
- Total ACFC:$3,307,726
- Athletic department: $1,399,352
- Lane Transit District: $815,857
2009-10 school year
- Total ACFC: $3,513,818
- Athletic department: $1,544,344
- Lane Transit District: $888,103