Student finance council begins portioning of student fee funds

The MHCC Student Finance Council met Wednesday night, beginning the process for allocation of student fee revenues for the athletic and co-curricular programs for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

For the 2012-13 year, the finance council will be distributing $1,330,899 between co-curricular programs, such as Associated Student Government, Forensics club, Student Senate and the MHCC radio station KMHD2, and the athletic programs, including MHCC baseball, track and field, and basketball, etc.

The total amount of revenue from student fees to be split for 2012-13 is $757,000, in addition to carry over funds from last year’s budget, including $228,483 carry over from co-curricular groups and $264,476 carry over from the athletic programs.

The athletics programs have requested $540,505, an increase of over $100,000 from last year’s $430,800, which can be attributed to new hires within the department.

The co-curricular program has requested $477,277, which is a slight increase from last year’s $463,180.

Because of 2011-12 carry over revenues, a significant spike in the total budget amount occurred, increasing last year’s $475,700 and $338,600 budget to athletics and co-curricular activities accordingly, to $643,071 and $607,078.

Any money not spent by a program after the budget is split for this 2012-13 year will in turn carry over to the 2013-14 fiscal year and will not be used for the 2012-13 year.

The reasoning behind this to provide contingency for the next year to cover for any losses incurred from variations in enrollment while still allowing for spending if enrollment does take a hit.

Both the co-curricular programs and athletic programs will be meeting over the next several weeks to discuss how to distribute funds between the programs before meeting once again with the whole finance council. At this final meeting, each program will publically go over the requested number of funds for its budget.

When the finance council meets an agreement on this year’s budget, the budget will be passed through student forums, to the ASG executive cabinet and finally will be put up for approval. If approved it is then sent to the district board for approval.

The athletic and co-curricular programs can request funds from the allotted student fee revenues to maintain and expand the programs.
Once the funds are allocated, the programs manage their budgets independently.