Budget and Allocations Committee Meeting Minutes
January 12, 2015
Senate Chambers 6:30 PM
Chairman: Blake Kennedy
I.
Call To Order
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Called to order at 6:34PM
II.
Pledge of Allegiance—Sen. Kishek
III.
Roll Call—Sen. Akers
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IV.
Quorum is established with 6 voting members.
Approval of the minutes
A) 11/17/2014
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V.
Senator Akers: Motion to approve the minutes from last meeting. Second. All in favor.
moved
Approval of Agenda
A) 1/12/2015
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VI.
Chairman Report and Remarks
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VII.
Senator Kontol: I motion to put the executive branch Special Request to 1st request read
under new business for tonight. Second. Discussion. All in favor. Moved.
Senator Akers: Motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second. All in favor. Moved.
The budget hearings start on Friday. The B&A committee is in charge of hearing out all of
the budget requests. They start at 9:30AM and end at 2:30PM. Breakfast and lunch are
provided. There will be an informational session right before at 8:00AM. Arrive at 7:45AM
for breakfast. This is a very important process that we are a part of. There will be
repercussions if you do miss those meetings. The next three Fridays we will be here all day.
For sponsoring a request, I sent out an email about that. I will be sponsoring all of the bills
tonight. I need you to help. Send me an email letting me know that you are interested. I
know that it can be intimidating to make motions; I just want to let you all know that I am
here for you. We have all been in your shoes. The more you put yourself out there, the more
you learn. I will answer any concerns you have.
Treasurer’s Report and Remarks
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Treasurer Wolf: I just have one transfer to report from Campus Recreation, $245 moving
from the utilities line to the repairs and maintenance line. We have been working on new
Travel Requests and Special Requests forms. Both are now available on the website, those
are the only ones that will be accepted from now on. Our first budget hearing is this Friday,
if you have any questions about that process please seek one of us out.
VIII.
Guest Speakers
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IX.
none
Account Totals
2014-2015 Fiscal Year
Travel Requests
Special Requests
Salary Reserves
Now
$14,073.54
$245,584.13
$57,978.08
After
$9,363.77
$222,015.21
$57,978.08
X.
Unfinished Business
XI.
New Business
*Senator Rotella: Motion to table the executive special request until they show up. Second. All in favor.
Moved.
A) Travel Requests
a) Courtney Martensen—Chairman Kennedy
- Courtney: I am a part of the Clinical mental health program at UNF. I have an opportunity to
travel to Orlando to attend the American Counseling conference. *shows clip on screen*.
Some people are volunteers, and I turned in my information early enough to become a
volunteer. It is the biggest conference of the year. It was in Hawaii last year. This year it is
from March 11th-15th here in Florida. There are multiple different classes and lectures. Some
of them are focused on kids. The bulk of the day is learning. It is really for my benefit. I get
to further my professional identity. This gives me an opportunity to do this first hand.
Having the ability to be exposed to all these things will give me the ability to help people. A
lot of the 1st year students in the UNF program can be benefitted from this as well through
collaboration with them. *shows cost breakdown on screen * I already paid my registration;
I need your help to go. I think I’ll have to cancel my trip if I do not get the funding from SG.
o Senator Akers: You said that the cost breakdown is different than the packet? - I was
notified that the fuel could not be funded. And it has to be moved.
 Chairman Kennedy: Just to be clear you are voting on this request,
and she is still requesting the same amount. The fuel can be
handled internally
o Senator Kontol: You said that the cost will be split with the roommate; do you still
plan on doing that? - Yes I will be getting a roommate to help pay the rest.
o Senator Akers: Is there any grade for this? - There is not, it is just to help me develop
my professionalism.
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Senator Kontol: Motion to approve Courtney’s request. Second. Discussion.
Motion for unanimous consent. Second. All in favor. Moved.
b) Athletic Training Student Association — Chairman Kennedy
Jake: We are comprised of 62 UNF students all juniors and seniors. We do a lot of
community involvement and healthcare promotions and deal with professional awareness.
We do a trash pickup 4 times a semester every semester. We also volunteer at the
Sulzbacher center. We work at clinics in the area. Certain schools don’t have the means to
hire their own athletic trainers. In health promotion, we volunteer as much as we can. We
volunteer at Jacksonville sports and medicine organization. We are going to Seata 30th
annual athletic training student symposium in Atlanta, GA. It is from February 5th-7th. There
are a lot of lectures for us to attend. It is also a great place to meet other professionals. We
have to pass a board after graduation and many of the seniors attending this event will be
taking a track to help us pass that. We will also be able to promote our club and UNF as a
whole. UNF has a physical therapy program, and this will help that as well. I think we are
fairly a good rep for UNF. We have a pass rate of 96%. Another chance to meet potential
employers.
Emily: we have done 5 fundraisers, raising 1,000. We have other things we have to fund as a
club. We have 29 students that want to go. Any money that we can get will be appreciated.
We also have 3 upcoming fundraisers this semester to help with the funding. We also have
worked the international dinner. The schedule of events is pretty packed each day. There
are many different seminars that we can go to. The juniors are going to take a track that
they will understand the classes. *shows breakdown on screen*. We are just trying to get
the $90 registration fee covered. We are going to take the reimbursement route. We also
intern 7 days a week and go to school full time, so it is hard to get a job and money is tight.
This will really benefit us. We want an equal share for each student, which is why it is an odd
amount.
Jake: All of our students are aware of the costs. We are just trying to lessen the burden. We
will be taking away a lot of networking in the sports medicine profession. It would be great
to make this a reality.
o Senator Kontol: Are just undergrads going or are there graduate students going as
well? – Yes, just undergrads.
o Senator Rotella: There are no seminars overlapping? – No, juniors and seniors will
be doing different tracks.
o Senator Rotella: How did you come up with 29 students? - There were just 29 who
registered.
 Senator Akers: Motion to approve this travel request. Second. Discussion.
Roll call vote: motion passes. 9-0-0.
*Senator Kontol: Motion to un-table the special request for executive. Second. All in favor. Moved.
c). (SPECIAL REQUEST) Student Government Executive Branch— Pro Temp Grantham
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President Turner: This will be a great benefit to you all. This is for additional checkout items
at ECO adventure. It is a bit of a sticker shock, but it is worth it. *shows broken equipment
on the screen*.
Director Costa: With that amount of enrollment, a lot of times you can’t checkout gear. We
rent out gear for one week for free to a student. There are a lot of times people lined up
trying to use paddle boards on campus. We have lost a lot of the fins on the boards. We are
constantly doing repairs and using that out of our own funding. It is just time. I have had
students coming back with cuts from our equipment. Some of what we are requesting is so
we can get rid of the old canoes. We only have a few of the kayaks and a lot of students
want those. I have been here almost 3 years and it has grown so much due to SG. As far as
the tents go, we are constantly repairing those. The workers there always have to fix those
themselves. All of them are ripped up and torn and can hardly check them out. Right now
my staff, we have a shoe string budget. My staff has been amazing; they have built on their
own kayak racks. We sat and made a whole new system so we can have more. We gutted
our own checkout. We put all new shelving in. we are not asking for some big building,
which we will need. We have a new brochure about all of our trips and it has our new logo.
o Senator Kontol: What do you plan to do with all the old stuff? - We have been
thinking about donating them.
o Senator Akers: Of your equipment you currently possess how much will be
replaced? - About 50-60%. The canoes are dangerous.
o Senator Johnson: The volume increase, is that going to create a problem for
storage? - Yes that was a part of the reason we did some construction over the
break. We built efficient stands. If we ever get to the point that we need to use a
storage unit at the wellness complex we will use that.
o Senator Johnson: How close would a new facility be? And how much would that
cost? - It could happen as quickly as a year or year and half. $750,000-$1.5 million.
 Senator Akers: Motion to approve the special request. Second. Discussion.
Motion for unanimous consent. Second. All in favor. Motion passes.
d). Chorale Club— Chairman Kennedy
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Tommy Shappard: We are here representing 6 of our members who want to attend the
ACDA conference in Salt Lake City, Utah from February 25-28.
Kara Simmons: The Chorale Club has 50-90 members.it is roughly 40% non-music majors.
We enjoy singing on campus for various events. Club alliance and SG has helped us get tshirts and other advertising things. We are also one of the most visible representatives off
campus. We also have been to ASDA in Orlando. UNF gets a lot of exposure from our off
campus events. This conference offers networking. It is open to students all over the world.
Students from Korea will be in attendance. Students will return with a lot of information to
spread throughout the campus.
Tommy Shappard: This is a nonprofit music organization. There are 7 regional divisions.
Members are representing millions. As students attending will interact with some of the
excellent chorale performers from around the world. Some benefits include networking for
future studies. One thing we should mention is that we can bring back information back to
the chorale network around Jacksonville. *Shows cost breakdown on screen*. It is quite
pricey since it is in Salt lake City, Utah. We would like to request to cover the registration fee
of each 6 students.
o Senator Bottom: Are the 6 students music majors? - 5 are and 1 not.
o Senator Johnson: Can you specify what the master class is? - They would be coached
in their techniques in this class. This is open to all people in the conference.
o Senator Kontol: Are any students willing to pay on their own? - Yes.
o Senator McCulskey: How would you pay for additional fees? - Dr. Tasher is looking
into department funds to help offset some fees. We are also talking about a bake
o
sale. We also do fundraising recitals. There is fundraising throughout the year, but a
lot of that goes to other things in the club.
Senator Johnson: Why did we not fund it in 2013? - Paperwork wasn’t turned in on
time.
 Senator Kontol: Motion to approve the travel request. Second. Discussion
(Senator Akers: I urge you all to look at the breakdown, we would have only
10,000 left for the rest of the fiscal year, ask yourself if it is really worth it,
we have reached the point where we need to be very picky, Senator Rotella:
I agree, but I would like to highlight that this gives us national recognition.
Senator Johnson: it seems like the quality sounds very valuable. Senator
Kishek: I think we shouldn’t look at what we have left, because it is
important. Senator Akers: we did run out fairly early last year of travel
request funds and had to turn a lot of students down.) Roll call vote: Motion
passes 9-0-0.
e). UNF Bass Fishing Club—Chairman Kennedy
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Thaddeus Heckman: We host local tournaments. We also like to do off campus events as
well as on campus events. We compete against others and learn. We get our boats through
the Bass Anglers. We do have our own source of fundraising. We do some boat wipe downs,
and sell t-shirts with our logo. Our simple cost is gas and lodging. We have everything else
covered. We are requesting a total of $209.77. We will learn as a club and pass that on to
students on campus who are interested in the club. We are a total of 25 members. This
allows us to get out of our local place. The ability to compete is really nice. We were unable
to get funding for our last event due to timing. We got to compete against Auburn
University. I am hoping we can get our name out there. It is February 14th in Bainbridge, GA.
There are2 students per event and three whole tournaments. It may change as the
tournaments progress.
o Senator Kontol: Is a boat going to provided there? - Yes.
o Business Manager Knipe: There is a request for fuel, it cannot be reimbursed. It
needs to be changed to mileage.
 Senator Rotella: Motion to approve the request. Second. Discussion. Motion
for unanimous consent. Second. All in favor. Motion passes.
B) Special Requests
a) Club Alliance— Chairman Kennedy
- Katie Jackson, Assistant Director of Club Alliance: We are the over branching of all the clubs.
We deal a lot of their funding. There are over 200 registered organizations on campus. We
have about 11,000 students registered in clubs. We are requesting some giveaways for our
specialized board fairs. We are also increasing our spring brash line. The last thing is a door
design. Club Fest is very similar to Spring Bash. We had 2,000 students in attendance. The
specialized board fairs are split up into the different clubs. There were about 125 students
attending these board fairs. The giveaways are for the club fairs. In spring 2014 club alliance
did the same thing. They requested so much, that we got to use some of their leftovers. We
are only requesting about $1,000 vs the $5,000 they had requested. Students said they
would like to see food or giveaways. Since food is expensive we are going with the
giveaways. In spring 2014 they requested $6,000. We are requesting about $2,000 in
addition to our current funding. We also want to help market club alliance. When you rent
tables through the union, you can only get a certain amount. We have reached out to
physical facilities and we got to rent 50 more tables. Sign-ups are already up and they are
filling up fast. The last thing that we are asking for is an updated door design. Club alliance
has a DIY design; it doesn’t look that great anymore. We want to match the rest of student
government. If we have the clear design on the door it will be clearer as to what our office
is. Events will help the clubs and students become more educated. Also, the opportunities
that come along with clubs help the students. If the request was denied, we would not have
as many clubs in attendance and no new door design.
 Senator McCulskey: Motion to approve the special request. Second.
Discussion. Roll call vote. Motion passes 9-0-0.
C) General Reserves
D) Transfers
E) Budget Balance
F) Finance Code
XII.
Announcements
A) Next Senate meeting is January 26, 2015 at 6:30PM in the Senate Chambers
B) I will send out an email tomorrow about the budget hearings also with some key terms
that will be used. Those will also be provided on Friday.
C) We will be meeting in the John E. Sapp Conference room at 8:00AM for an informational
session before the budget hearings start. Breakfast will be at 7:45AM.
D) The Budget Hearings will begin at 9:30AM. This is a 3 week process. The 3rd Friday is
when Treasurer Wolf brings her budget in, and then we vote on that.
E) If you would like to look at the requests they are available in the B&A office for you to
look at so you are prepared for Friday.
F) We can line item amend a request. You can amend it to break down the funds
requested. Cleaner way to do it is for the senator to rescind their original motion.
XIII.
Final Roll Call—Sen. Akers
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XIV.
Quorum is reestablished with 9 voting members.
Adjournment
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Meeting is adjourned at 8:08PM.
Minutes taken by: Leah Tolisano, Senate Secretary.