FINANCE COUNCIL APPROVES CO-CURRICULAR AND ATHLETICS BUDGET

The Student Finance Council has decided on how to split student fees collected in the 2018-19 academic year among activities groups on campus. And, thanks to an increase in fees (and revenues), groups were mostly satisfied with the result.

Each year, student representatives from athletics and different co-curricular activities – such as the Associated Student Government (ASG), the Advocate newspaper, forensics team (speech/debate), etc. – meet to vote on the student activities budget.

The budget gets split in half, one-half going to athletics and the rest going to co-curricular. The last four years, student representatives were forced to make cuts due to smaller budget forecasts, because of declining overall student enrollment.

This year, athletic programs made some spending cuts, while co-curricular activities were able to roll over last year’s budgets, or even secure increased funding. (Full disclosure: I represented both The Advocate and Venture magazine, and each got increased funding.)

The process didn’t come without some hiccups.

Due to some staffing changes in the business office, ASG representatives didn’t receive budget projections for the activity fee until around the end of Winter Term, according to Nathan Skarphol, ASG vice president and director of finance. That delayed the work.

“Obviously, it would be rather foolish trying to create just a random budget with no budget projections, so we wanted to make sure we had those projections before we tried to create a budget,” said Skarphol.

Thanks to House Bill 2666, approved by the Oregon Legislature in 2017, student governments at Oregon’s community colleges have the power to petition the college to raise student activity fees without the direction of the school’s board of education. Last year, the MHCC activity fee was increased by $.50 per credit. The fee was recently increased by another 50 cents per credit for the 2018-19 year.

For 2018-19, the total projected revenue that comes directly from activity fees is $754,623.

After accounting for fixed costs, the budget for the co-curricular side is projected to be $339,385 while athletics is projected at $373,067.

The final vote for the co-curricular budget was completed by email on the morning of April 18. An MHCC District board of education meeting later that day addressed the entire budget for the college.