By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 16, 2013
SUS is making moves towards a new, more transparent budget process.
Those in attendance at November’s EGM will remember two new SUS budgeting committees are voted into existence. Both were designed to avoid a budget crisis like the one that hit the campus pub this fall, and to involve the students in the budget process in future years.
The first committee came from Derek Froese’s eight-part motion, which mandated the formation of a Financial Oversight Committee (FOC). This committee would assemble in the event that the deficit contingency fund—a $30,000 line on the new budget—needed to be accessed. The committee itself will be made up of elected executive members from UFV’s clubs and associations with the condition that one representative be from the Business Administration Student’s Association (BASA) or the Accounting Students of the Fraser Valley (ASFV).
Derek Froese says he designed the committee as a failsafe, in the event that SUS runs into more financial trouble.
“We wanted better preparation, awareness, and oversight for future overages in this fiscal year . . . there is no known need for it yet,” he explained. “Hopefully there won’t be.”
Froese also noted that assembling the FOC to access to the deficit contingency fund would be a hassle.
“[It] takes some effort to spend,” Froes reasoned, “so it only gets used in true emergencies.”
The defining factor of the FOC is that it is short-term; it is part of a motion reliant on his redesigned budget and is only relevant to the 2012/2013 fiscal year and will disintegrate in April with the end of the fiscal year.
As a more long-term adjustment, SUS president Shane Potter also passed a motion at the EGM that saw the creation of a budget committee that promises longevity beyond this year. He says it’s part of a movement towards full budget reform in which SUS will focus on transparency and involving SUS members in the entire process.
Previously, the SUS budget process was internalized, not visible to the student population until showcased at the Annual General Meeting. With Potter’s budget reform, the budget committee will create a budget skeleton and pass it to the SUS finance committee. Like the FOC, the budget committee will involve students not on the SUS board in an effort to create a more collaborative process.
“I believe that a lot of the problems came about due to improper budget creation,” Potter said, explaining the new process compared to the old. “[We’re] workshopping something and then getting feedback from the community . . . It’s not a budget, it’s a budget draft.”
This more long-term reform will allow everyone to offer feedback on the budget before it gets approved. Potter admitted that they may become overloaded with information by opening it up this much, but for now they want to keep it open.
“We are the Student Union Society, we represent the students. So the students should have an involvement in the budget.”
