After two weeks of discussion and a workshop clarifying several issues, the 2002-2003 DASB Budget deliberations remain unresolved.

Last Wednesday’s Senate meeting was adjourned early with a majority vote to allow the Senate ample time to analyze the new budget considerations that were introduced by Senator Anthony Choice.

Choice said he felt it was necessary for the Senate to compare the 2000-2001 DASB Budget with the current proposed budget for 2002-2003.

According to Director of Student Activities John Cognetta, prior to two years ago, unused funds at the end of the school year would go into another budget process called Request for Proposal. However, the RFP fund “was rollover money [which] was never added to the income for the annual budget,” Cognetta said.

“Essentially the students ran two budgets, [then] come September of the following year, they ran their annual budget requests … and then they wanted to allocate this [RFP fund],” Cognetta said.

According to Cognetta, the Senate got rid of the RFP because “it got too difficult for the students to run two simultaneous budget processes, look at what [the DASB is] going through now, it was hell … trying to run two,” he said.

Since the budget process is still transitioning from the RFP process, causing setback in the deliberations. “Essentially, what we were using as the basis to cut [program funding] … was just way off,” Choice said.

He said it seemed the last two weeks of deliberations were “kind of a waste.”

“It never occurred to anyone along the way until [now] that … these numbers are off because they’re higher than they should be,” Choice said.

In order to give the Senate a chance to review and compare the new information, Senator Christina Smith proposed that the meeting be adjourned.

“I don’t think it would behoove us to try to go over the numbers right now … it took us weeks to do the preparation just to get to the first budget,” she said. “It is not fair to … try to make conclusions tonight. We really need to … research.”

“The new budget considerations are drastic enough that they warrant review … a very thorough look-over that we couldn’t give at a meeting like that,” Smith said.

Budget deliberations will continue today at a special meeting.