By Emily Wunderlich
Ensnarled in confusion and miscalculations, Student Government budget writers have proposed deep cuts in an array of student organizations and programs.
But because of SG’s mistakes, it is not precisely clear how deep those cuts might be.
Under a plan recommended March 20 by the SG appropriations committee:
- The Campus Movie Fest, which got $10,000 this year, and the Stampete spirit committee, which got $14,668, would get nothing next year.
- The campus’ seven biggest organizations, including SG itself, would take cuts ranging from about 6 percent to about 20 percent.
- The Crow’s Nest would take one of the biggest hits – in the range of 19 to 21 percent.
- Although SG would take a cut, 21 students would continue to draw SG salaries totaling $70,398.75.
The appropriation committee’s recommendations came during a chaotic, six-hour meeting marked by confusion, raised voices and – at times – laughter. One of the six senators appeared to fall asleep twice.
“This is a mess,” said Gregory Cote, chair of the appropriations committee. “This is a complete mess.”
In emails to The Crow’s Nest two days later, Cote said SG’s budget work papers have conflicting numbers on the amount of money that student organizations got for the current year.
The numbers on the summary page conflict with numbers elsewhere in the work papers, Cote said.
“Obviously one of these sets of numbers has to be wrong,” he wrote.
Until that mistake is resolved, it is impossible to calculate how much less money each student organization will be allocated in 2019-2020.
The appropriations committee’s recommendations – and the conflicting numbers – go next to the SG general assembly, which meets at 5 p.m. March 24 in the University Student Center ballrooms.
But Ysatis Jordan, student body vice president, encouraged the committee to find $9,000 more to cut from the budget before that meeting.
An authorized “error”
Every year, Student Government allocates a little less than half the money from students’ Activities and Service fees to organizations like Campus Recreation, the Harborside Activities Board and the Office of Multicultural Affairs. (The rest of the A and S revenue automatically goes to the University Student Center.)
Because student enrollment declined this year, A and S revenue also declined by 1.9 percent, or $28,392. It’s also expected to decline next year.
Compounding the problem is a huge miscalculation that SG leaders made as they began planning the allocations.
To soften the blow to other campus clubs and organizations, SG leaders said they cut 60 percent of their own budget.
But SG also requested $0 in operating expenses, which totaled $109,050 last year.
Instead, those expenses fell under a different category in the budget: the cash flow operating reserve, a “type of savings account for A and S initiatives,” according to Student body President Daniel “Kaeden” Kelso.
The reserve contains A and S funds that were not spent in previous years, Kelso said in an email to The Crow’s Nest. He called it “an emergency fund, or an account to fund major projects and initiatives,” including capital projects, large one-time programs, non-recurring funds and unexpected operating expenses.
“If we were to not use the Cash Flow Operating Reserve and added in our operating expenses in the budget, the reduction to all organizations would have gone up,” Kelso said.
Although Kelso said SG is “authorized” to use the reserve to fund its operating expenses, he said campus administrators advised him against it after a Crow’s Nest reporter inquired about it.
Kelso called it an “error,” and it forced the appropriations committee to cut a total of $78,927 from the budget at its March 20 meeting.
But Dwayne Isaacs, director of student life and engagement, downplayed that error at the meeting, instead attributing the budget’s shortfall to the decline in student enrollment.
“The dip in enrollment was the biggest thing that hurt us,” he said. “So it wasn’t anything that Student Government did. It wasn’t any incorrect budget.
“If you look at the enrollment projections last year, and you look at what the projections are this year, very stark difference. So that hurt.”
The $78,927 in cuts were only a portion of the $190,908.60 needed to reach a balanced budget.
Isaacs told the committee that the goal of cutting that much from an “already bleeding budget” would be unattainable.
Committee members should make cuts wherever they could, he said, and he would explain the difference to university administrators.
“What I’m trying to do is keep student life alive here,” he said. “So just keep that in mind as you all have your chainsaws and sledgehammers out right now.”
Crow’s Nest takes big cut
The deep cuts proposed for The Crow’s Nest come at a time that the paper has drawn plaudits for its coverage of consolidation and the implications for the St. Petersburg campus.
On Feb. 5, the Tampa Bay Times praised the paper for providing “excellent news coverage of the consolidation issue.”
The paper also thoroughly covered the Legislature’s decision to abolish St. Petersburg’s independent accreditation last year, the ouster of Regional Chancellor Sophia Wisniewska in September 2017, and the sexual harassment allegations that forced the campus’ top academic administrator to step down in 2015.
In its recommendations, the SG appropriations committee eliminated the paper’s advertising manager and two of its assistant editors. It also eliminated the $1,000 photography budget and reduced printing from 15 issues a semester at 800 copies each, to 13 issues at 500 each.
Under the proposal, the editor-in-chief’s salary was cut from $5,808 to $5,440, the managing editor from $4,488 to $4,080 and the adviser from $3,150 to $1,360.
“It is careless and unfair to single out the newspaper for the deepest cut,” said editor-in-chief Whitney Elfstrom. “Big changes are underway in the USF system, and this campus needs a strong, vigorous press.”
The cuts leave The Crow’s Nest with 10 salaried positions — far fewer than the 21 salaried positions in Student Government.
$70,399 for Student Government employees
Under the proposals, the SG president would continue to earn $10,968.75; the vice president, $8,325; the president of the senate, $7,800; the senate president pro tempore, $5,500.
“I would not recommend the committee to make any changes because these positions are very vital to our whole university, and they are already overworked,” Cote said in the March 20 meeting.
“We can’t afford to have that risk of someone not being compensated and then choosing to leave because it’s not worth their time for how much work they put in,” he said.
The chief of staff and chief financial officer positions were both increased from $5,100 to $5,250 due to an increase in minimum wage. (See list below.)
Here’s how much Student Government employees stand to make under the new proposed 2019-2020 budget.
Executive branch
Student body president: $10,968.75
Student body vice president: $8,325
Chief of staff: $5,250
Chief financial officer: $5,250
Chief legal officer: $1,400 (cut of $560)
Director of communications and graphic design: $3,264
Director of student government relations: $3,264
Director of events: $3,264
Director of sustainable initiatives: $3,264
Legislative branch
Senate president: $7,800
Senate president pro tempore: $5,550
Policy chair: $714
Appropriations chair: $714
University research chair: $714
Special funding chair: $714
Judicial branch
Chief justice: $1,260
Ranking justice: $714
Senior justice: $714
Prosecutor: $1,750 (cut of $700)
University defender: $1,750 (cut of $700)
Elections rules commission
Chair: $3,825
The proposed 2019-2020 budget can be found here.
This article was updated on March 25.
A previous version stated that the waterfront program was not allocated any funding for the 2019-2020 year. The waterfront program was actually allocated $40,000, but it was dispersed throughout other areas within the organization’s budget.
The article also stated that the chief of staff and chief financial officer positions were both increased from $5,100 to $5,250. The updated version explains that increase was due to the increase in minimum wage from $8.25 to $8.46. SG leveled off the minimum wage at $8.50 for everyone in A and S-funded departments.
