ASUI Senate experienced a small budget crisis due to miscommunication over available funds.
Sen. Nicole Skinner, head of the finance committee, said members of the senate were under the impression they had $7,000 in the budget Wednesday night. However, the senate allocated just $4,100 through several bills last semester.
“Essentially, no one was keeping a ledger of the finances we’ve been spending this year. Somehow, seems very simple doesn’t it? I thought so too,” Skinner said. “Also, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of how many funds we had in the first place. We’ve been operating like we’ve had 2,000 more dollars to use than we did.”
Skinner said of the $7,000, the senate allocates $2,000 for administrative costs, such as printing name tags, and $5,000 for general spending. Skinner said the senate has about $900 left in their budget.
“We had a wrong idea of how much money we had. It wasn’t communicated to them. But, they did not fully understand that $2,000 is set aside for other expenses,” Skinner said.
Skinner said the budget is so small because $1,900 of the total budget went towards a bill passed last semester to send a handful of senators to Texas for a student government leadership conference near the end of February.
Later in the meeting, a resolution was passed to urge UI to make double-sided printing the default on all university printers. Sen. Hannah Spear said students could opt out of double-sided printing if needed.
Sen. Spear said the resolution would save UI and students in printing costs.
Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6