The Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) Budget Committee distributed a proposed budget for the 2000-2001 Academic Year to ASPC members at Tuesday’s senate meeting. Although these figures are subject to change, the senate intends to make official decisions at its next meeting, and plans to inform Pomona organizations of their funding by as early as next week.

According to ASPC President Richard Park ’00, the senate plans to spend about $15,000 in new accounting software and computers for the ASPC office. This will lead to cutting funds of some clubs and organizations. The expense is necessary because the accounting software used to manage all the clubs and organizations had been experiencing problems over the years and finally crashed this year.

However, the senate is continuing the commitment to an alcohol fund. The budget plans indicate an increase in these funds, yet Park said the fund itself will be smaller.

Aggregate ASPC Budget Expenses

"CCLA does not have access to the funds," Park said. "They are targeted to smaller events. Dean [Anne] Quinley is not contributing to the fund anymore, so it’s actually a net decrease from last year."

Park believes that the alcohol fund is a valuable, and with it, campus organizations were able to hold about 50 activities in the past year.

"A lot of events wouldn’t have been able to be held without the alcohol fund," Park said.

According to ASPC Vice President and Budget Committee Head Putnam Shin ’00, about 30 new clubs, organizations and new line items were added to the budget this year. This includes Pomona Outreach to the World (POW), the paintball trip, ski and beach day and homecoming.

"By creating a separate account [for these events], we’re eliminating some of the bureaucracy," Shin said. "Basically, we want them to happen. We think these are good traditions at Pomona and we want to make sure they’ll continue to happen."

The budget committee spent 15 hours on April 16 with budget committees from the other five colleges listening to 10-minute presentations put on by 5 college organizations. Then they spent about 10 hours on April 22 giving Pomona organizations the opportunity to present their budget proposals for the coming school year.

Shin believes the process was very careful and systematic. If a committee member did not agree with the activities of a particular organization, Shin said that the member has a responsibility to carefully consider if the activity will benefit any group of the campus.

"If you’re a member of the budget committee, you are an elected individual of the student body," he said. "If a certain constituent on campus will benefit from it, you have an obligations to fund it. That’s honestly what happened at the budget hearings this year."

Factors influencing the budget decisions of each organizations include the activities they have held this year and propose to hold next year, relative cost for each of these events, projected revenue that each club expects to get and their current account balance.

Assistant Director of the Smith Campus Center Dave Swenson said that $108,473 had to be cut from the total requests in order to balance the ASPC’s income of $366,800.

"If we could, we would give everyone what they wanted," Swenson said. "It’s a tough process. Very few groups get everything that they asked for."

Shin said, "I want to emphasize that the committee honestly worked really, really hard to make sure this is a fair process. We put in a lot of time and effort into this. I’m all for communication, so if someone has a concern or they would like to ask about our concerns, I would encourage them to come to talk to any of the budget committee members."