ASUO Senate approved the benchmarks for both the Programs Finance Committee and the Department Finance Committee’s budgets, which will account for growth in the Assault Prevention Shuttle budget as well as the Career Center’s removal from the incidental fee.
Senate heard recommendations on Wednesday from the executive and members from both committees, discussed the proposed options for the budget benchmarks and approved the benchmark they deemed fair. The approved benchmarks allow a budget growth for PFC to not exceed 3.5 percent, and 1.08 percent decrease for DFC.
The PFC recommended a growth of 3.5 percent from last year, an increase PFC Chair Devon Duquette said is necessary to allow programs to function at capacity.
“It was enough to fund programs and help them reach their full potential to help University students,” he said.
Among the programs with big fund changes was the Assault Prevention Shuttle, which needs more money to staff dispatchers so that it can fund the increase in shuttles, a change APS implemented last year but did not entirely fund with its budget. Duquette describes this as a “prime example of required growth.”
Megan Foster, the co-director of finance for APS, said the growth began last year with the influx of freshmen living in the Kinsrow area.
In the past, APS could fund the operation out of only one van on Friday and Saturday nights. Last year, APS asked for more money to accommodate this increased group of off-campus students with more vans and staff members. After last year’s budget hearings, PFC gave the program part of the funding and APS found the rest of the money from over-realized funds.
“Essentially (the increase in budget) gives us the rest of the money to be able to pay for the dispatchers,” Foster said.
APS runs by staffing each van with a driver, a navigator and a dispatcher who remains in the office. On weekends, five student dispatchers work to run two vans. The increase in budget pays for two more staff members, maintaining the operation of two vans on the weekends.
“The APS is incredibly important to students. With more funding, APS can have more shuttles,” Duquette said. “This (current) lack of resources hurts students and requires attention.”
The benchmark decided for the DFC was a negative number, which projects a decrease in budget for next year. Senate decided on the executive’s recommendation of decreasing the budget by at most 1.8 percent instead of DFC’s recommendation of decreasing by 2.85 percent.
DFC Sen. Demic Tipitino said the difference in the two recommendations came over “half of one position.” The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Education and Support Services Program had requested an increase in funding to pay for a full-time, rather than just part-time, staff member. The executive factored in the requested increase while the DFC left the position part-time.
Tipitino said the position was always part-time with “an understanding that at some point, that if the position was deemed valuable, administration would pick up the rest of the position — the other half of the funds.
But, Tipitino said, “the administration has not done that, and it sets a wrong precedent that we will fork out student money every time administration won’t do their fair share.”
Despite concerns, the request will still be considered.
“I don’t want to say it’s not going to happen, it’s a point of contention,” Tipitino said.
Not all ASUO-funded programs are guilty of reliance on student government funds. In the next two years, the Career Center will no longer get funding from the incidental fee.
The Career Center, which has been funded by the fee for the past five years, has waned its dependency on student dollars while slowly receiving increased funding from general University funds.
“This is a really good example of cooperation between administration and the students responsible for managing the sizeable budget,” said Career Center Director Deb Chereck.
Tipitino said that he will not follow the Senate-approved benchmark if it does not meet the goal of staying below 7 percent growth.
“Even though I respect the recommendation Senate laid down, if this puts us over our DFC-set 7 percent cap, we will not adhere to it,” he said. “Fiscal responsibility is our number one goal.”
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