The Undergraduate Students Association Council had a lot on its plate, with multiple allocations and proposals to approve during Tuesday’s meeting.
First, the council approved the USAC election ballot presented by elections board chair Kyle Kleckner after making a quick amendment to fix misspelled candidate names.
Then the councilmembers moved to approve the ASUCLA Undergraduate Students Association overhead budget for the 2008-2009 school year.
The council amended the budget by changing the USA secretary income from the proposed $12,306 to $10,000, a figure similar to secretary salaries in previous years.
In addition, the council approved an additional stipend for the Office Space Allocation Committee chair. The chair will now receive a $175 stipend each month and slightly smaller amounts during the summer.
The approved subtotal administrative overhead budget was a little over $500,000, not drastically different from the past two years’ budgets.
Later in the meeting, the council finally approved The Green Initiative Fund guideline literature; representatives of TGIF will most likely add the proposal to the upcoming election’s referendum ballot.
OSAC recommendations were presented to council for approval.
Some councilmembers said they did not feel comfortable voting on the recommendations because they did not have previous dialogue with the OSAC commitee or know why the original proposal was altered since last week’s council meeting.
The office space recommendations were finally tabled for next week after lengthy discussion among OSAC committee members and councilmembers. An open OSAC and council meeting prior to Tuesday is tentatively in the works.
Toward the end of the meeting, Gabe Rose presented an Increased Representation Amendment to his original senate proposal. He recommended that four more general representatives be added to council in order for the student body to be more fairly represented, which would mean there would be seven general representatives on council, making the total officer head count 17. The general representatives would have a greater legislative role than a programming one.
Several committee members were in favor of the new proposal by saying the council needs increased representation.
Discussion continued at length until Rose held a tabled vote.
The amendment proposal needed a two-thirds majority vote but failed, 7-5-0.