With the Oct. 5 deadline looming less than three weeks away, this year’s Fee Advisory Committee met for the first time Monday to discuss the process of approving fees and increase requests.
Although the committee initially tried to extend the fee proposal process, which it submits to the Chancellor, members instead have to deal with an even more shortened timeline.
One change to the fee process this year is that Student Senate President Greg Doucette is co-chairing the committee with Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Tom Stafford.
Doucette did not contribute during the meeting but he did relay his skepticism in a previous interview about the plausibility of the committee making these decisions in such a short amount of time.
Before the committee reviews the requests, the Budget Office obtains them from different groups in the spring and makes recommendations. In June, the office asks the groups if they want to revise their requests.
The Budget Office then 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 last week said the Budget Office would release the fee request proposals to the committee by Monday. But the Budget Office said it could not release the report until today, which Stafford said is understandable.
“They got a lot of work to do to get the information processed,” he said.
According to Lisa Clough, University budget officer and nonvoting member of the committee, the Budget Office looks at the requests based on each group’s revenues, expidentures and cost of operations.
Clough said a lot of groups went back and changed their requests in June because the state legislature increased employee salaries and because sometimes, the groups did not estimate how their budget would look at the end of the year correctly.
There are eight groups requesting fee increases for next year — Student Legal Services, Athletics, Education and Technology, Talley Student Center, Student Health, Rec Sports, Debt Service for the Student Health addition and Transportation.
Last year, the Board of Governors set a 6.5 percent cap on all tuition and fee increases, which means the total amount fees can increase this year is $69. However, indebtedness fees and transit fees do not fall under that cap.
Stafford told committee members that because of conflicting schedules, he would allow proxies for the presentations by groups requesting fee increases, but not during the actual meetings, where the committee will vote on the increases.
No other meetings will be held this week.
