Bus Pass Advisory Committee, 26-Feb-08 meeting

The Bus Pass Advisory Committee met on 26 February 2008 to discuss the proposed FY2009 budget with representatives from Transportation Services (TS). Here is a brief summary of the hour-long discussion with TS:

Student members of BPAC were uncomfortable with some of the overhead and salary expenses included the proposed budget for FY2009. The five-year Memorandum of Understanding that was signed in May 2007 does not contain any language regarding overhead expenses, nor does it say anything about the SafeTaxi program. There are differing perspectives as to whether the agreement was for students to pay for 50% of Campus Bus overhead in addition to the 50% they agreed to pay for direct (“local”) costs of bus service. To avoid losing the SafeTaxi program, students last year agreed with TS to pay for all of the program’s direct and overhead costs. They did not, however, agree on a method for calculating the overhead, which requires a somewhat arbitrary division from SafeWalk overhead costs. In practice, segregated fees were used in FY2008 to pay for a variety of overhead expenses, including 50% of those associated with Campus Bus and 40% of SafeTaxi/Walk Programs. Committee members expressed their hope that the MoU could be made more specific to reduce ambiguity in future years.

Committee members agreed to make the following recommendations to the Student Council, which was scheduled to meet on 27 February 2008:

1. Remove charges for the new Marketing Specialist from the portions of the budget charged to segregated fees on the basis that students were never consulted on the formation or budgeting of this position.
2. Reduce to 3.7% the basis for increases to Supplies and Services charges.
3. Reduce overhead expenses in a number of other areas, as per the proposal presented by K. Flores and M. Bergamini on 27 February 2008.

Questions regarding this report can be addressed to Noah Theriault whose contact information is available through the university's online directory.