The House of Appropriations Committee meeting on Sept. 23 addressed the Transportation account going negative due to bill 19-06 being passed unanimously.
Bill 19-06 (SCAR Transportation Fund) was in support funding for Mav Bikes. The bill will take money out of the Colorado Mesa University (CMU) Associated Student Government’s (ASG) reserve and put it into their Transportation Fund.
Going negative is not in any of the Representatives’ agenda. “I think this is self-explanatory, we are in negatives and the next step is to pull out of our reserves,” House Representative BriAnne Marr said.
“I do think that it is important that we do replenish our account, so our account is not negative. I hope we exercise some fiscal responsibility so this doesn’t go back into negatives,” House Representative and Editor in Chief of The Criterion Chris DeLeon said.
In other news, the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) requested $1,585 from the SCRF fund at the end of the House Appropriations meeting.
The ACDC is an association that allows two different choirs from CMU to attend a conference and participate in CMU recruitment opportunities by performing and talking to other high schools around the country. This in turn spreads the word about CMU to high schoolers interested in a higher education.
Last year, ACDA was granted $3,000 from ASG and this year they are seeking a little less than half that amount of money.
“[ACDA] can definitely get the word out about CMU and I know that ACDA and with that we have funded them $3,000, this is basically cutting that in half. We like to see clubs be self-sustaining, I think that with this bill I am for it,” House Representative Karson Fye said.
The representatives were more eager to donate this year because ACDA continues to become more independent and self-made. After the ACDA finished presenting their proposal, the house members had to decide on the amount of money they would offer the association.
Every representative agreed to pay the $1,500 in travel expenses for the ACDA and bill 19-07 (American Choral Directors Association) was passed.
There was some tension when discussing which fund the money for ACDA was going to come out of though. House Speaker Colton Rupple first suggested taking the money out of the transportation fund, but representative DeLeon did not want to see Transportation dip into the negatives again.
“On the surface that makes sense, but we have already seen transportation dip into the negatives, and SCRF is a large budget that can be pulled from. I would like to see it come from a bigger pot,” DeLeon said
Chief Financial Officer Jacob Martin was certain taking less than $1,600 out of the Transportation budget would be the best option. “In the biennial process we chose not to fund SCRF, our current SCRF budget is $68,000 and that needs to last four semesters,” Martin said.
After hearing about this budgeting limitation, DeLeon agreed. “That provides nice clarification, as far as this trip itself I enjoy that they are requesting less than 50% and that is the fiscal responsibility we are looking for, and it sets a really good precedent, beyond that in their presentation they discussed a good investment in their recruiting efforts. When we could see CMU growing, the more student fees are being brought in and thus this can be paid back,” DeLeon said.
