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Executive Council submits proposal for 2015-16 budget

The USUSA Executive Council finalized its suggested budget for the 2015-16 EC.

The recommendation will be presented to next year’s EC ,who will have the option to vote it in for the 2015-16 school year. The 2015-16 EC will have the chance to change the budget if they wish and will have an official amount when they do so.

The future EC will not know exactly how much they have until enrollment for next school year is set because their budget comes out of student fees.

The budget, which is funded by student fees was more than $938,000 this year and is expected to increase next year, due to an anticipated raise in student enrollment.

There were four changes to last year’s budget recommended for next year. Among them is a $1,000 increase to the Aggie B.L.U.E. fund, $1,000 raise to the executive vice president’s budget, a $1,000 raise for the Aggie advocate budget and a $400 decrease for Executive Council budget.

The increase for the Aggie B.L.U.E. fund was because the event, which is a student leadership conference hosted by USUSA at the beginning of the school year, usually goes over budget. Participants usually pay a fee to get in to the event, which helps fund it, but the excess budget is usually subsidized by the USUSA president’s budget. The recommended budget was $6,000 after the change.

The increase to executive vice president’s budget was to emphasize academic initiatives. It also came with a recommendation to next year’s EC to set aside $2,000 of the $5,571 budget for academic initiatives.

The $1,000 increase recommended for the Aggie advocate budget making the new recommended budget for the position $5,596. The reasoning behind this is that this office’s budget is consistently one of the tighter budgets.

The $400 decrease to the EC budget is because of the removal of the Senate Pro Temp position. The Pro Temp is a college senator voted on by the other senators to represent them on the EC. The Pro Temp receives $400 each year to take on the added responsibilities. With the removal of the Pro Temp voted on by students, the $400 was taken out to make the recommended EC budget $72,562.

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