By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 9, 2013
This past November saw an Extraordinary General Meeting that was equal parts hubbub and standing room only, as students and SUS members gathered in a second attempt to review and discuss the fate of UFV’s campus pub.
For those that couldn’t make it to all five glorious hours of the meeting, here’s a handy recap.
Sam Broadfoot, VP finance, steps down.
“Due to my involvement in numbers that were published . . . that include a lot of fallacies and a lot of things that we unfortunately overlooked when we first presented them, I feel directly responsible for this,” Broadfoot stated in a surprise announcement before the meeting began. “Also because of my involvement with the previous board in allowing AfterMath to continue to run the deficits that it has today, I do not feel comfortable continuing as a director.”
Broadfoot explained he would be stepping down at the end of the meeting. The SUS board has since accepted his resignation and Ryan Petersen, long-time rep-at-large, has stepped into the role as VP finance.
Shane Potter sums up SUS’s monetary situation to date
Potter stated that it’s not as simple as running a deficit – as a society, it’s only possible to go into debt if there is reserve funding to cover the loss.
“We’re not like Canada, where we can borrow from China . . . basically, we either have money, or we don’t have money,” Potter explained.
In previous years SUS had a Health and Dental reserve fund, formed out of any extra money left over from Health and Dental fees once student claims were paid for. Potter explained that the SUS board drained this fund in the 2010/2011 fiscal year, since more claims were made than the fees could pay for.
The SUS board in 2005/2006 also formed a capital fund, which generates income for SUS through investment. Although it’s not intended to be used as a reserve fund, Potter explained that it sometimes functions that way.
“Because we can’t run deficits, it can be used as a reserve fund in an emergency,” he stated.
Potter went on to explain the SUS board has drained almost $300,000 from the capital fund since 2009, leaving just over $15,000 as of November 2012. This money has gone to pay for a variety of budget overages, from UPASS to the campus pub.
Potter also noted that neither the Health and Dental reserve nor the capital fund has been contributed to in the last five years.
SUS bookkeeper Darlene Turnbull also noted that, for three years running, the SUS board took money from the Health and Dental reserve to cover the costs the campus pub when it went over budget. She described the result as a domino effect.
“We got to the point where we had to pay the Health and Dental [costs], and we didn’t have this money. It’s a self-sustaining fund: money going in, money going out. We ended up going back and ended up finding out that money had been taken out of there,” she explained, noting that this maneuvering hid part of the deficit that the campus pub ran in those years.
Daniel van der Kroon discusses the SUB
January 2008 saw 12 per cent of students vote to create a fee for a Student Union Building. The motion passed with a 52 per cent majority.
“So the question is whether that is a statistically valid representation of the student body. I’m going to argue that it’s not,” van der Kroon stated.
Van der Kroon criticised the wording of this referendum, which packaged together a reduction in a Health and Dental fee and an increase in the form of a SUS building fee.
“I think it’s quite clear those two questions should have been separated,” van der Kroon stated. “Students should have been able to obtain a reduction in the Health and Dental fee even if they did not want to implement the Student Union Building Fund levy – if that reduction in the Health and Dental fee was indeed justified.”
Van der Kroon argued that this referendum (and another in 2011, in which students voted to secure the SUB’s $10 million mortgage) misrepresented both the student body at the time and the current student body. Van der Kroon further suggested that SUS hold a third referendum to form a more accurate representation of student opinion.
The Froese motion
CISSA president Derek Froese presented a multi-sectioned motion with the intent to keep the campus pub open. In brief, the motion takes the following actions:
• Rescinds the October decision to close AfterMath for the year on November 30.
• Adopts a new budget for the remainder of the fiscal year, as constructed and presented by Froese.
• Bars SUS from closing or trying to close AfterMath for the remainder of the fiscal year, unless AfterMath goes over its new budget.
• Instructs SUS to budget for AfterMath in future fiscal years “with historical numbers and future projections in mind.”
• Adjusts SUS board honoraria as described by the new budget.
• States that all costs associated with the Student Union Building (including architectural and legal costs) be paid out of the SUB fund rather than the general fund.
• Describes the construction and implementation of a “financial oversight committee” comprised of executive members from student clubs or associations, which will then oversee and approve any budget line deficit.
• Requires SUS to review and report their budget every month until the end of the fiscal year.
The Froese budget
The new budget first allows for some small adjustments in income – revenue from the sale of handbooks has exceeded expectations, and revenue from ATMs on campus has been below expectations.
Perhaps most notably, the budget cuts the honoraria of SUS board members – resulting in a pay cut for directors, and complete removal of honoraria for community reps (including reps-at-large, clubs and associations rep, aboriginal rep, accessibilities rep, etcetera).
Froese also cut from the SUS retreat, SUS members’ cell phone allowance, senate reports, SUS’ accessibility fund, the SUS conference fund.
Funding for associations, student grants, and emergency student grants remain unchanged.
The SUS events budget has been cut, and the advocacy budget (which would have been used in part to send SUS members to the upcoming CASA conference) was substantially cut from $8000 to just under $200. SUS’ professional development fund was also cut.
Part of the budget, as described in the main motion, moves a set of SUB fees out of the general SUS fund and into the SUB fund.
All in all, the budget reallocates about $40,000 to fund AfterMath for the remainder of the fiscal year, and puts approximately $22,000 more into a deficit contingency fund.
Several failed amendments
There were several proposed amendments that failed to pass.
VP social Chris Doyle proposed that SUS vice-presidents be required to put in fewer hours to match the lowered honoraria. The amendment was overturned.
Rep-at-large Rachel Waslewsky proposed that the advocacy fund be reinstated at $8000 to allow funding to go towards sending SUS members to an upcoming CASA conference. The amendment was overturned.
Shane Potter suggested Froese’s motion be tabled to allow students and SUS board members to examine it more closely. The motion was overturned.
Meeting chair Greg Stickland entertained a motion to vote by secret ballot so no student would feel pressured to vote a certain way – especially considering the EGM was held in AfterMath and most of the AfterMath staff were present. This motion failed.
In conclusion . . .
Froese’s main motion passed with 47 for and 18 opposed.
“I also want to stress this budget is only for the rest of this fiscal year. All of this will be changed again come April, for the 2013/2014 budget,” Froese concluded. “This budget is entirely to get us to the end of March. It’s not presumed that any numbers that were lowered will still be lowered for budgets following. I’m not trying to set any precedents for upcoming budgets – it’s just for this particular year.”
Other business:
In the interest of time, several motions were tabled until next meeting. VP internal Greg Stickland introduced a motion to lower the number of students needed to hold a SUS meeting on the first attempt, as well as a motion to clear up confusion concerning how soon new SUS members can speak at SUS meetings.
Daniel van der Kroon rescinded a motion to adjust SUS board honoraria in light of the honoraria changes introduced as part of the new budget.
Shane Potter motioned to form a SUS budget committee, which would transform the SUS budgeting process from an internal process into one including student associations and UFV community members.
“It’s transparency to the max,” Potter explained, noting that the motion would also help break student fees into understandable pieces, so students will better understand what their student fees are paying for and in what quantity.
“This is essentially to create accessibility about the numbers, and create transparency in the SUS,” Potter concluded.
