The chancellor commissioned the fee advisory committee Tuesday to begin a fast-tracked fee increase approval process — in 23 days, about a week shorter than last year’s.
Although some committee members submitted a proposal to the chancellor to extend the fee review process, due to the fact that the Board of Trustees have to receive the fee recommendations in November and then forward their recommendation to the Board of Governors, which will review them in February, the extended timeline was denied.
Tom Stafford, co-chair of the committee and vice chancellor for student affairs, said one change that will take place is that the committee will no longer solely be chaired by him but by Student Senate President, Greg Doucette as well.
“Otherwise, the procedure will pretty much be the same,” Stafford said.
Although Stafford said he knew of all the groups requesting fee increases for next year, he refused to release the list because the University’s Budget Office is still working to finalize the requests.
Lisa Clough, University Budget Officer and non-voting member of the committee, was unavailable for comment Tuesday afternoon.
“The reason a lot of students complain about this process is it takes the Budget Office a while to close out a fiscal year,” Stafford said.
According to Stafford, the Budget Office receives fee increase requests from different groups in the spring and then asks the groups if they want to revise their requests at the end of the year. After they do so, the Office goes through the requests, evaluating each group’s reserve and budget from the previous fiscal year, and then sends its recommendations to the fee advisory committee.
Stafford said the committee should have the requests at the latest, next week.
“A lot of times, the Budget Office’s recommendations are driven by whether [each group’s] reserve is too high or too low,” he said.
According to Stafford, this year’s process is even shorter than last year’s because after the fee advisory committee makes its recommendations and the tuition advisory committee makes its recommendations by Oct. 5, members from both committees will come together to discuss the proposals in a new committee called the conference committee.
The chancellor will then look at those proposals and discuss it with student leaders and get their input.
Doucette said he is skeptical that everything that needs to get done will be get done in such a short amount of time because there are about a dozen people on the committee and the meetings need to be worked around all their schedules.
According to Doucette, this year, he wants to hear the student body’s opinions on fee requests and is planning to have referenda for all fee increase requests to be voted on. The referenda currently is scheduled for Oct. 1 and 2, according to Doucette.
“It was something that I campaigned on having more student involvement in the process,” he said.
Stafford said the limit of a 6.5 percent cap on all tuition and fee increases, which the BOG put into effect last year, will affect the fee process.
He declined to comment on what he thought of the cap.
But, according to Stafford, fees like the debt service fee and other “special fees” do not fall under the cap, though he was unsure of exact specifications for these fees except for fees that only apply to students in certain programs, such as this year’s golf management fee.
This year, students are introducing two new fee requests — a homecoming fee and a sustainability fee, but are unsure if these will be approved.
According to Student Body President, Bobby Mills, the BOG said they would not be accepting recommendations for new special fees — though Mills said the General Administration has still not set exact specifications for this requirement and thinks his sustainability fee still has a chance.
“When you make an investment, you get a rate of return,” Mills said of what he said his fee would produce in monetary value for the University and environmental impact.
Stafford said due to the time limitations, since the fee advisory committee reviews about four to eight increase requests, the committee is trying to schedule at least three presentations from the groups requesting the increases during each of the three fee advisory committee meetings.
“The fee process is complicated and lengthy, and convoluted,” Stafford said.
The committee will be looking at fee increase requests based on how much money each group needs to operate or if the group needs the money to establish a new program or service or to enhance one that has already been started.
