SUFAC Meeting 10/04/10
Members Present:
Laura Lauderdale
Madisson Heinze
Reece Rykal
Derek Nelson
Carly Cappozzo
Ben Knutson
Tiep Nguyen
John Palmer
Hoang Vo
Brock Bennett
Bonnie Jo Bratina
Larry Ringgenberg
Not Present:
Bill Doering
Brianne Rogers
Meeting called to order 5:33 pm
I. Athletics carryover
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They would like to keep their entire carryover ($569.78) and use it for buses to
have the men’s basketball team go to a Milwaukee Bucks game
Should this be allowed or should this fall under a contingency fund request?
Discussion of Athletics agreement – decided not to put their own projected
revenue into their budget so they don’t over-predict and over-spend.
Should we let them keep their carryover or not? To be discussed after budget
hearings tonight
II. Budget hearings – The Racquet
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Had a very good year – many new ways to advertise, changed advertisement
system completely, many more issues sold than projected → much higher
revenue than projected
Budget surplus of $9,700 but still a budget deficit of $3,733. They would like to
keep their budget surplus from last year to help pull them out of their budget
deficit. If they are allowed to keep this money, they intend to be pulled out of
debt by the end of this fiscal year
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Business this year has been tremendous – they try to have one print
advertisement per page and would like to make more revenue than last year but
cannot predict that at this point
Group discussion: This mentality that we can take program revenue away from
groups doesn’t make sense. Then they have no reason to even go through
SUFAC, correct?
III. Budget hearings – Multicultural Events
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Budget comprises 6 multicultural groups with various programs. We focus on
leadership and encourage students to put on quality programs, not just spending
money. The Director of programming tells groups to plan on the high end of
budgeting to account for inflation and so that they do not over-spend. This,
combined with a significant carryover from the previous year, offset their
original budget plans. There has also been an increase in attendance to a lot of
the multicultural events which increased program revenue.
Last year there was a significant donation from PROVOTES (about $5,000 in a
one-time donation) to help support Multicultural Events program. There was
also support provided from the Ho-Chunk Nation and UW-Eau Claire. None of
this money was asked for nor accounted for in the original program budget. The
Multicultural Events program was also supported by several grants which were
not projected.
The program has tried to cut back on travel in the past few years, as advised by
the University, and this cut back on projected costs as well
We feel that this is a program which will be stand-alone financially within the
next year or so. They anticipate another increase in program revenue for the
2010-2011 fiscal year.
Request to purchase 2 computers to put in the Multicultural Events office to be
used by students for planning and meeting purposes. Preliminary plan for cost:
this would not be possible without being allowed to keep their carryover. They
would like to keep $1903 to purchase 2 desktop computers to be moved to
Centennial Hall when their office moves to that location. There is room for 5
computers in the new office – if we gave them the entire carryover, they could
buy more than 2 computers
Revenue last year was $2676.44 and no revenue was projected
IV. Budget hearings – Student Association
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Carryover of $5,071 – Request to return $2700 to the account to purchase 2 Dell
laptops. One laptop will be used for the Student Association Secretary and the
other for the Campus Lawyer, both of which had computers that recently were
deemed “non-repairable” by IT.
Last year, Student Association applied for a one-shot for a computer for the
secretary and it was deemed not necessary at the time. Student Association was
notified near the end of summer by the former Secretary that the old laptop was
no longer functioning.
There was a carryover last year and Student Association has been trying to cut
corners with their budgeting and not spend money when it isn’t necessary. They
also cut some travel budget out last year and a lot of the money allocated to be
spent on supplies was not spent.
V. Budget hearings – CAB
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Negative ending balance ($-2,580.79)
They started last year thinking they had $3,000 more than they actually had
which was the cost of living increase. There were $7,000 put towards the
Centennial Celebration concert and the proposal was vetoed by the Chancellor
due to the budget situation. Thereafter, CAB thought that the $7,000 and $3,000
were going to be put into their budget but Student Senate did not approve either
of these amounts even though CAB had already accounted for the $3,000 in their
yearly budget.
Last year’s spring concert was of a different genre and did not make a lot of
revenue ($2,831) and the cost was about $20,000. CAB would like to get a more
mainstreamed artist for the spring concert this year.
They would like to have their deficit removed and would like to also receive a
cost of living increase this year.
VI. Budget hearings – Graduate Student Organization
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Positive ending balance of $2,553.47
They were told last year that they couldn’t spend the previous year’s carryover
(about $500) and they were told to cut their travel 4% ($600) so this money was
not spent all year. They were unaware that they could spend this money last
year so that accounts for $1,100 of their $2,553 ending balance.
The program has four cycles of funding, one of them being in May. They
allocated $1,200 during this time but the money was not encumbered until the
current fiscal year (2010-2011).
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Request to keep their entire carryover because the extra money was due to an
accounting error and miscommunication with SUFAC, not due to the program’s
faulty budgeting skills.
VII. Budget hearings – Scholarship Reception
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They received a one-shot last year and instead of spending money out of the
one-shot account, they spent money from their budget. They will not be coming
in for a hearing tonight because it was just an accounting error.
VIII. Discussion about how we would like to go about these decisions about carryover
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Should we allow them to keep carryover money to spend on capital items or
should this be proposed as a contingency fund request?
By giving them a special case scenario, we are making the process more
complicated. This is what we created the contingency fund for.
This is their revenue; they should be able to put it towards something they need.
This isn’t unspent segregated fee money.
Are we making too many exceptions? We need to draw the line somewhere so
that people have incentive to budget responsibly.
Groups need to have a real need for these items and be justified in their request
for them because otherwise the money needs to be put back into a central pool
so students aren’t paying for unnecessary items, just so
IX. Budget Carryover Decisions
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(Bennett/Heinze) Move to approve the Racquet’s ending balance at ($3,733.00)
Multicultural Events – Do they really need 5 computers? Should we be financially
responsible for buying them 5 computers/Do they really need 5 computers? This
group has very good budgeting strategies and they have taken fiscal
responsibility for the events that have caused them to get off budget. There is a
policy in place to deal with these situations so we should follow them VS. Our
decisions should be taken on a case by case scenario. This money is revenue and
they budgeted well so maybe in this case, we can justify this money being spent
through their carryover. These computers are not running Windows 7, which is
campus standard, so they really do need these computers – but CAN the
computers run Windows 7?
o (Knutson/) Motion to give Multicultural Events their full program revenue
back as carryover: $2,676.44 and they can spend this revenue however
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they would like and this request must afterwards be justified in writing to
SUFAC. Motion Passes 10:0:0
The computers for Student Association are very necessary and action needs to
be taken a.s.a.p. to solve this problem VS. The computers are necessary but the
money to fund them should be taken
o (Palmer/Knutson) Motion to carryover $2,700 to Student Association to
be spend on 2 computers Motion Fails 4:5:1
(Cappozzo/Nelson) Motion to approve $2,700 purchase of 2 computers
through the Contingency Fund Reserve Motion Passes 10:0:0
(Palmer/Knutson) Motion to approve Student Association’s carryover at
$0 Motion Passes 10:0:0
CAB has projected a very large revenue for this year, can they really make this
much money this year? Their miscommunication last year was because they
didn’t budget/communicate responsibly and their justification to have their
negative balance wiped out was not justified.
o (Bennett/Rykal) Motion to approve CAB’s carryover deficit of ($2,580.79)
Motion Passes 10:0:0
Graduate Student Association awarded $1,200 in May but was not encumbered
until this fiscal year. The other $1,100 was due to
o (Palmer/Bratina) Motion to carry over $1,200 to Graduate Student
Association to account for the money they awarded last may but was not
encumbered until this year. Motion Passes 10:0:0
o (Knutson/Bennett) Motion to approve Scholarship Reception’s carryover
at $0 due to accounting errors. Motion Passes 10:0:0
X. Athletics Carryover discussion brought back to the table
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Something like this has never been done before but they do have the right to
this money. Does it make a difference that this is money being used for travel? It
is their place to decide
o Motion to approve Athletics carryover at $569.78 because they made
revenue last year. Motion Passes 10:0:0
XI. Discussion about “Dead Accounts”
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Fan Bus and Anthology accounts are no longer being used but there still shows
that there is money in the accounts. There are several other dead accounts as
well. Some of them have been inactive for up to 12 years.
o (Palmer/Rykal) Motion to zero out and delete all dead accounts. Motion
Passes 10:0:0
XII. Discussion of possible new vice-chair
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Duties will be about the same as the vice-chair – assisting the chair whenever
necessary
o Motion brought forward by the chair to nominate Carly Cappozzo the
new Vice-Chair of SUFAC. Motion Passes 9:0:1
Meeting adjourned 8:00 pm