MEETING START TIME: 6:30 PM EST

 

ATTENDANCE:

Committee: Lachance, Taylor, Vutech, Feeny

Absent: Palmer, Pelison

Non-Committee: VP Howard

 

COMMITTEE DISCUSSION:

 

• Topic 1: Members
  • There is a lack of members within the Finance Committee.
  • Due to a lack of people to work on it, and with other items on the agenda, the finance handbook’s revision will be pushed to the side, at least until the start of the new year.
• Topic 2: Group Requests
  • There will be a PINK women meeting this Wednesday, requesting thirty dollars for payment toward a new website.
    • Finance committee believes that they can receive a cheaper price than thirty dollars on the website domain.
      • Feeney questions looking for a URI domain before they try other (paid) options, to see if it would be cheaper.
      • Howard suggests that there are multiple free services that would be able to create a domain for PINK women, but perhaps not of as high caliber or quality as a paid-for domain.
    • There will be a meeting with CVSA for a large contingency request, as well as MUSIC. MUSIC has named what their contingency request would be for, however, they have regretfully presented a lack of specific information. So far, CVSA is unclear as to where their money would be allocated.
      • Information provided by MUSIC is unacceptable, and the Finance Committee cannot come to a decision at this time pertaining to their Contingency Request.
      • If funds are needed, there are processes for such things. This would be the first time that the Finance Committee had approved a contingency grant as a budget.
    • Topic 3: Budgets
      • It is possible to do an entire season’s budgeting within a span of three days.
        • Could this be done in the spring? Finance committee could proceed with this idea, moving the allotted budgeting season from 2.5 months into three days (Springfield’s Student Senate has performed this in the past).
          • This will be looked into. The implementation will be worked on, and revisited.
        • Re-recognizing organizations takes up too much time
      • Topic 4: Cigar’s Budget moved to next week.
      • Topic 5: Finance Committee’s Well-Being (and other indistinct topics)
        • Not too much is on the table, request wise, but seeing as the committee had planned to make changes to the Finance Handbook, but can no longer do so, the committee is likely in need of more people.
        • Taylor requests that Lachance and Feeney come up with a Google Document/Form, and spend enough time to create a multi-question quiz that student organizations should have the answer to, by October 15^th.
        • Finance committee has no set time where they will meet. Committee consists of more than three-to-four people. The committee needs to be able to get more people together at one time to make more cultured decisions.
        • Chairman Taylor requests that the Finance Committee come with a series of things that they would like to get done for the year.
          • Diversity within the committee and the general senate would help to progress the wants of the student body as a whole.
        • When making decisions pertaining to the budget, one should keep this in mind: will it benefit the world as a whole? Or at least, the world of the University of Rhode Island?
        • Members of the Committee stress that people know about senate, but they do not know about senate – and some students within the school know neither.
      • Topic 6: Excess Topics
        • Brought up by Feeney: Gaming Club owns a Play Station 4 which has sustained mild damage. Any services must be done through a contract. If vendor has standard contract, then it may be signed by the directors. (Talk to Cheryl)

 

MEETING ADJOURNMENT TIME: 7:38 PM EST