Bailey Schulz
1/15/2016
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Committee for Fee Allocations approved the Parking and Transit Services’ budget request of $1,273,837 on Thursday night, Jan. 14.
1/15/2016
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Committee for Fee Allocations approved the Parking and Transit Services’ budget request of $1,273,837 on Thursday night, Jan. 14.
The new budget is a 4.3 percent increase from last year’s allocated University Program and Facilities Fees and will cost students $27.69 per semester. The request was approved with a unanimous vote by the 11 members.
Joseph Zach, an committee member at large, read the recommendation of allocations, saying the subcommittee felt the $52,837 requested increase was an appropriate use of student funds. While it’d be nice to keep funding at the current level, he said, increases due to inflation are to be expected and must be accounted for.
Two Fund B users also presented on Thursday night: The Nebraska Unions and the Newspaper Readership Program.
The Nebraska Unions, led by director Charlie Francis, requested an amount of $4,657,547. This would be an additional $179,331 in UPFF funding, a 4 percent increase from last year’s budget.
The request states the amount will be used to continue the current level of quality and services offered by the unions and to “recover increased cost of purchased utilities, utilities infrastructure, information services and minimum wage mandates.”
The Nebraska Unions are looking at an increase in student hourly wages, where there has been an increase of $35,638 because of the minimum wage increase and staffing adjustments in the Union. There are currently more than 140 students working for the Nebraska Unions.
Additionally, there’s an increase of $64,431 in fees from information services to support meeting room technology and desktop computing.
The request also states that the unions hope to increase the money budgeted to its purchased services category by $17,500 to cover new Student Involvement Registered Student Organization software.
“Our RSO leadership is telling us that they need a more robust way to manage the things that students are involved with us,” Francis said.
The Nebraska Unions is hoping to purchase new software that would move things such as event planning from taking place on paper to the computer to benefit students.
The Newspaper Readership Program also presented its budget request. The program provides students with free copies of the Lincoln Journal Star, The New York Times, the Omaha World-Herald and USA Today.
The program requested $160,000 in UPFF allocated fees, which is the same amount they’ve been allocated for the past two years. That would be about $3.48 per student per semester.
The program, made in partnership with USA Today, only charges for the number of papers that are taken from boxes, not the number originally provided.
While there has been a slight decrease in readership, Francis said it’s more common now than it was for students to get their news from other sources such as tablets and phones. Additionally, he said more students will take papers the closer it gets to the presidential election.
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