SG reviewing A&S budget requests

Student organizations that have applied for the 2002-03 annual Activity and Service Fee budget will begin reviewing the mock budget this week.

David Armstrong, business manager for Student Government, said these are just the initial budgets, and he hopes to have more detailed numbers by the end of next week.

“We hired a guy who actually is familiar with SG because he used to work here to put all the numbers into a database to have historical data in the future,” Armstrong said. “What we have right now is just a simple spreadsheet of the budget.”

Armstrong said there are some budgets that decreased and some that have increased from last year.

“The Marshall Center, Campus Recreation, Veteran Services, the University Lecture Series and Campus Activities Board all received increases,” Armstrong said.

The total money the Activities Service Review Committee has for allocation is approximately $7.5 million. This includes the reserves and the over-collected fees the university received from the increase in enrollment figures.

“We will probably have more money to allocate this year than we had last year,” Armstrong said.

The Oracle budget was one of the A&S funded groups that was cut for the 2002-03 budget. Last year, The Oracle received $179,821, and it is allocated $88,922 for this year’s budget, which is a 50 percent decrease. The student paper is filing an appeal, Armstrong said.

Student organizations overall have a 12 percent increase from last year’s allocation, Armstrong said.

“We had five more new organizations request for funding this year, plus we had some leave and some that never turn in paperwork for funding,” Armstrong said. “We also had some organizations that were interim become annual, as well.”

SG received a 3.9 percent increase from last year and will receive $1,034,245. This figure excludes the executive branch.

“The executive branch is an interim fund, and they file their budget in June when the new board comes in,” Armstrong said.

The review of the budgets must be conducted by Friday at 3 p.m. There will be no other time to review a budget, and those who wish to look over or have questions about their budget can go to the SG office in the Marshall Center and make an appointment, Armstrong said.