Most student groups ‘ and the Student Association itself ‘ will be seeing a significant increase in their budgets after nearly $200,000 was released from the SA’s emergency account last month.
The retained earnings account is designed to safe-guard the organization against unexpected losses and costs. Richard Marmolejos, the outgoing financial vice president, called it a ‘savings account’ that has accumulated from years of disuse.
Because the SA is a not-for-profit organization, he said, it was time to put the money back into circulation.
Although the steep increase allowed the SA to give higher allocations to a substantial number of student groups, some see the release as a problem for the future.
‘It was obviously a lot more fun writing the budget this year than last year because it’s really rewarding to be able to meet student groups’ requests,’ said Chris Powell, vice chair of the Financial Council and vice president for finance-elect. ‘Next year it will be hard to match the distribution and it will be a pain to disappoint those students.’
Besides benefiting student organizations, a significant portion of the funds ‘ around $28,800 ‘ will be fed back into the SA’s own office, stipend and event planning accounts.
Indeed, many of the larger increases were earmarked for uses within the SA, such as increasing stipends for executive board members and their assistants, creating a leadership fund for events like the SA Getaway and forming an information technology fund for the SA office.
The new allocation of funds was approved by the SA Assembly during a budget hearing that broke a long tradition of tedious debates over the proposed allowance drafted by the Financial Council.
While the majority of the discussion was dedicated to the financing of student groups, there was much debate within the Assembly over office and programming funding that would go directly back into the SA.
But not everyone at the hearing saw the influx of money back into the SA as a good thing.
‘We’re spending more and more dollars on [internal] SA stuff,’ said one representative, Alex Rosenthal, when the Assembly was discussing the office account. ‘I can’t in good conscience tell groups that they can’t get this or that. But the point is we can’t be telling all the students groups ‘No’ and spending too much money on SA business.’
The stipend was increased by almost 40 percent over the past two years, with an increase of $8,150 for executive board assistants for next year. Executive board members now make $4,000 a year and have $1,800 to distribute among their assistants.
According to Marmolejos, the increases will allow more growth on the e-board.
‘Every office is expanding and trying to get more things done’ he said. ‘It’s still pennies for the hour.’
The new budget also includes a decrease of $7,000 in the SA’s office account ‘ a fund primarily used for stationery supplies. The decrease was offset by the creation of a $12,500 information technology fund, devoted to the cost of computer and server equipment within the office.
‘We were trying to pinpoint exactly what these accounts should be used for,’ Marmolejos said of the expenditures.
To Powell, who will be overseeing the SA’s finances next year, separating the accounts also adds accountability to the organization.
‘By more narrowly defining how funds should be used, we can prevent reckless spending and ensure that funds are being used in the manner they were intended,’ he said, referring to the SA’s purchase of a large flat screen TV for the office.
Next year’s budget also earmarked $2,250 for the ‘SA programming’ account, an allowance for what was described as SA’s programming director Stephanie Kaponya’s work with student groups. Kaponya has a $36,000 salary.
Besides allocating more money to inner-SA accounts, Assembly members also decided to divvy up more money to a majority of groups, while the rest remained the same or suffered low losses.
The largest increases went to Club Sports, with a raise of $18,000; $16,000 more went to the Harpur Jazz Project; $8,000 more to the Speech and Debate team; an additional $3,000 to Chabad; $1,500 more to Hillel Jewish Student Union, and almost $8,000 to form a Relay For Life group.
The meeting ended surprisingly early and contentiously, with a 12 to 11 vote with two abstentions to approve the drafted budget.
L.J. Spaet, the SA treasurer and chair of the Financial Council, spoke against an early end to the hearing, stating it was ‘hypocritical’ to mainly consider groups with representation on the Assembly.
‘We need to deal with groups we don’t deal with on a day-to-day basis,’ Spaet said.
President-elect David Bass also urged the Assembly to reconsider the budget.
‘I think this is one of the most important meetings that you’ll be at as an Assembly rep,’ Bass said. ‘The [Financial Council] chair himself is saying this budget is not perfect. I just think FinCo did a good job, but it is the job of the Assembly to do what we think is best for the students.’