2008 Woodie Awards
Wireless Internet drives student fee increases
Ben Slivnick
Issue date: 1/31/07 Section: News
Residence Hall Association President Mike LaBattaglia said that he plans to approve the proposal in a letter to the Student Fee Review Board, an assembly of students and administrators that will put the final stamp on the budgets in two weeks before the plans are submitted to university President Dan Mote and finally the Board of Regents. LaBattaglia said that because most of the added costs were mandated by the state or the university, the fee increases were unavoidable.
"It's a very no-frills budget," he said. "There's no frivolous spending. It's mostly just generally upkeep things. This seems like it's passable."
This year marks the first year ever a member of the RHA has been represented on the committee, and LaBattaglia said that with the added representation, he hopes to advocate further against the university's policy of cost containment, even if that advocacy might not reverse the process by which the university collects a yearly cut of profits earned by Resident Life, Resident Facilities, Dining Services and other self-sustained departments throughout the school.
While RHA senators generally approved of the proposed budgets, they grilled the department heads on how they were using their savings funds. Resident Life and Resident Facilities have a plant fund of $21 million dollars. Dining Services has $13 million.
Director of Dining Services Pat Higgins discussed a savings plan that is collecting money toward renovations for the South Campus Dining Hall that were recently pushed back from 2009 until 2017.
Grandner said the money would gradually be spent on facilities renovations, and despite calls for a new dorm, she said that without permission from the Board of Regents there was no room for such a massive-scale project in their current budget.
Although typically discussed at the RHA's annual student fee meeting with the departmental directors, Department of Transportation Services' budget was absent from the gathering because the meeting was scheduled for a week that Director David Allen was out of town. After multiple increases in the cost of parking fees and tickets over the past few years, there are no indications as to whether these fees will increase again next year.
Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.
"It's a very no-frills budget," he said. "There's no frivolous spending. It's mostly just generally upkeep things. This seems like it's passable."
This year marks the first year ever a member of the RHA has been represented on the committee, and LaBattaglia said that with the added representation, he hopes to advocate further against the university's policy of cost containment, even if that advocacy might not reverse the process by which the university collects a yearly cut of profits earned by Resident Life, Resident Facilities, Dining Services and other self-sustained departments throughout the school.
While RHA senators generally approved of the proposed budgets, they grilled the department heads on how they were using their savings funds. Resident Life and Resident Facilities have a plant fund of $21 million dollars. Dining Services has $13 million.
Director of Dining Services Pat Higgins discussed a savings plan that is collecting money toward renovations for the South Campus Dining Hall that were recently pushed back from 2009 until 2017.
Grandner said the money would gradually be spent on facilities renovations, and despite calls for a new dorm, she said that without permission from the Board of Regents there was no room for such a massive-scale project in their current budget.
Although typically discussed at the RHA's annual student fee meeting with the departmental directors, Department of Transportation Services' budget was absent from the gathering because the meeting was scheduled for a week that Director David Allen was out of town. After multiple increases in the cost of parking fees and tickets over the past few years, there are no indications as to whether these fees will increase again next year.
Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.
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