The annual student fee budgeting process — in which a Student Government Association commission reviews student fee-funded entities to draft a budget for next fiscal year — is one week away. Here’s what you need to know.
Starting at 9:30 a.m. on March 2, the finance commission will begin hearing from each entity requesting student fee funding for fiscal year 2027. FY 2027 runs from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027. Each group will have 15 minutes to present information about their entity and their budget requests. Then, a questioning period will follow.
The hearings will go from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on March 2 and 3. March 4’s hearings will start at 9:30 a.m. and end at 12:15 p.m.
The finance commission will then go into deliberations on March 5 starting at 9:30 a.m..
During deliberations, the student fee commission discusses how it will create its proposed budget. Based on the hearings, commissioners give their recommendations on how to fund the entities within the allotted budget.
This year, the finance commission is reviewing all student fee entities, a break in the typical format due to the $929,000 budget shortfall last year.
The student fee entities are split into two groups, A and B. Typically, only one group goes through the hearing process each year, and those groups have their budget for the following two fiscal years.
Last year, the commission’s student fee budget was $929,000 short of the initial number provided by the director of administration, finance and operations. The shortfall was caused by lower enrollment and an error in the way the budget was predicted. This led then Student Body Treasurer Jia Wen Wang to order all student fee entities budgets to be reviewed. The entities then received reduced budgets.
If the budget process had gone back to normal for this year, only group B entities would go back to a regular budget while group A entities would be on a shortfall budget for another year. This led current Student Body Treasurer Luke Bumm to once again order that all student fee entities present to the commission and be reviewed.
“We’ve really been working with (the Budget Office) to stay on top of everything by meeting at least once a month over the past couple months to try to make sure that we’re right on track for everything and there’s no mishaps like last year,” Bumm said.
After deliberations, the finance commission will present its proposed budget to the Student Senate at a following Senate meeting.
The Senate then has the authority to alter the proposed allocations and vote the budget into place. Bumm estimated the budget would be presented at the March 11 Senate meeting. The Senate meets in the Rhatigan Student Center, room 233, at 7:30 p.m. every Wednesday.
The hearings, deliberations and senate meetings are open to the public and will be live-streamed on SGA’s YouTube channel.
