VP Finance Bryan Cassella gave a special presentation about the executive budget and how council has come up with additional money to face the deficit. $149,000 is being cut from cabinet budgets, $25,000 from sources such as stipends, $21,130 has been made by selling senior memory books and council has received $27,480 from A.S. Graphics Studio.
Cassella warned council about the dip in the mandate reserves which is at $312,710 but should be at $700,000. Cassella explained that later in the year he will form a buy-back plan for reserves so that it can reach $700,000 again. Mandate reserves have fallen by so much because the over-expenditure deficit of $200,000 gets pulled immediately from the reserves to pay it back.
Albert Trujillo, the UCAB chair, announced that the overall debt from the co-ops is $105,790 and that they were still working with them to figure out a way to reduce their debt.
AVP Concert and Events Eric Babajanian told council that the deadline for student organizations to submit applications for spaces at Hullabaloo will most likely be extended from this Friday to a later date due to under-enrollment. He also told council to let its constituents know that the ASCE survey, which decides the type of acts that perform at The Sun God Festival. is up.
AVP Diversity Affairs Elizabeth Garcia informed council that SPACES’ haunted open house event will be this Friday from 11 to 2 p.m. She also reported to council that a coalition of South Asian peoples at UCSD reached out to her about a petition for a South Asian studies minor. Garcia told council that the interviews for the candidate to lead the Black Resource Center have been successful, the hiring committee recently interviewed its third candidate who they hope will be appointed soon.
Sixth Senator Linda Le invited council to come to Geisel library this Sunday at midnight to celebrate the new library hours.
One of the biggest controversies of the night came from Bobbitt’s request to increase funding for Freshman Council.
“I’m not going to talk to athletics and diversity who’ve already taken a 50 percent cut and say oh, take a 57 percent cut, I just can’t do that, this is $7000 out of $300,000,” Bobbitt said of taking money from A.S. mandate reserves to provide additional funding for Freshman Council.
Most senators objected to taking money from A.S. mandate reserves because of the enormous budget deficit already in place.
“We can’t be over-allocating this year because we are expecting a 4 percent enrollment decrease in the next quarter,” Cassella said.
Eventually Bobbitt and 10 other senators decided to donate their stipends to bridge the funding gap for first year council. After the motion was approved, Bobbitt momentarily left the council floor in frustration.
