Student Assembly Finance Commission
April 4th, 2006
5:00 p.m. — 6:00 p.m.
163 Day Hall

I. Call to Order

The Meeting was called to order at 5:00 p.m.

II. Roll Call

Commissioners

Adam Castle, Jeffrey Cohan, Jillian Dorans, Erica Fischer, Colin Heath, Jennifer Hsu, Brittni Levinson, Kim Lewis, Scottie McQuilkin, Samuel Miller-Little, Nadia Ormsby, Spencer Pepper, Eric Schulman, Anastasiya Sidorova, Riti Singh, Kate-Lynn Timmermans, Evan Walker, Joey Zielinski, Luke Chernosky, Mary DePalma, Alex Saltman

III. Business of the Day

Policy Issues

J. Zielinski started out by saying that Saturday, April 22nd, will be the new date for interviews. He said that there will be many seniors graduating so we will need a lot of new recruits. He also mentioned that Ms. Yu resigned from the SAFC and Ms. Grant will also be resigning due to time constraints. Mr. Zielinski also noted that it was Ms. Lewis’ birthday. He also said that Ms. McQuilkin and he met with Ari last week and discussed some ideas. They thought that the SAFC should keep publications the same and also thought of getting rid of Co-Organized budgets altogether. They believed this would help cut down on paper work and save the SAFC money, but getting rid of Co-Orgs stops groups from really working together.

B. Levinson asked if the SAFC were to get rid of Co-Orgs, could those groups apply for some other type of funding.

J. Zielinski responded with that groups could ask for it individually in their budgets.

S. McQuilkin said that Co-Orgs seemed to have three groups with the same executive board working together to put together one event, and that almost seemed like a case of duplicate groups. She mentioned that cutting Co-Orgs could be a quicker way of getting rid of duplicate groups.

N. Ormsby said asked if this would affect the “priorities” in the budgets.

S. McQuilkin said no.

J. Zielinski said that this would lower cuts, and increase caps.

S. McQuilkin said that if the SAFC were to eliminate the Co-Orgs, they could have a higher engagement fee.

R. Singh said that she thought this was a bad idea because it hurts big events, which more people go to anyway.

S. McQuilkin said that those groups could still have the big events, just individually.

R. Singh said that having Co-Orgs allows groups to divide up responsibilities.

A. Castle said that Co-Orgs are a much more efficient means of reaching the Cornell Community, and both groups benefit from one event.

K. Timmermans said that getting rid Co-Orgs left huge chances for groups to “double-dip”, and then the groups would still work together.

S. Miller-Little said that Co-Orgs are more interesting and more enticing to the Cornell public.

A. Sidorova mentioned that groups will still find loop holes.

B. Levinson said that maybe the SAFC could just put big group functions are a “priority four”.

J. Zielinski said that next week the SAFC would sit down and work more to incorporate these new ideas into the handbook. He also brought up the idea of getting rid of the “priorities” altogether. He said that the SAFC should just have categories, this allows groups to ask for all the money they need, helps allow percentage cuts in all categories, but would increase the amount of allocation money.

R. Singh said that she liked the idea, but she thought the groups should put rankings of things they want so the SAFC could get rid of the lowest ranking thing.

J. Hsu said that she agreed with the ranking of things groups wanted, but they would put all of them as “the most important”.

J. Dorans said this ranking system is the same as the priorities. Instead the groups could have a section in the budgets for comments.

K. Miller said that this idea does not help the fact the SAFC is a subsidiary organization. She said the groups will just ask for more stuff, and the cuts will be higher.

J. Zielinski that the SAFC could post the percentage cuts of previous years to let groups understand the amounts of cuts. He suggested possibly putting caps on things.

A. Sidorova said that caps on different things would affect different groups, which would not be fair. She said also that groups would simply ask up to that cap amount.

K. Timmermans said that the SAFC should use the priorities better and simply take away the third priority instead of making percentage cuts.

A. Castle said that this could cripple groups as some third priorities are still very important to the functionality of that group.

R. Singh said that groups can shift money anyway so it would not cripple them.

E. Walker asked what the guidelines were for allowing groups to shift money. He suggested possibly limiting the shifting of money.

S. McQuilkin said that groups can only shift money around after approval of the SAFC. She also mentioned that groups cannot shift money to buy brand new things not approved previously by the SAFC.

J. Zielinski mentioned that all money not spent by groups goes back to the SAFC. He also said that he brought up these big ideas just to get a feel for how the commission would react to them. Lastly, he asked for any final thoughts.

E. Fischer said that she has quarter cards for SAFC interviews.

C. Heath suggested that the commissioners wear their SAFC shirts one day.

-The rest of the commissioners strongly disagreed.

IV. Meeting ended at 5:35 pm.

Respectfully Submitted,
Daniel Kantor
SAFC Clerk, Office of the Assemblies