The sustainability coordinator position will likely become a permanent fixture of the ASUO, following the Programs Finance Committee’s approval of funding for it during its meeting Tuesday. The $40,000 expenditure for the sustainability coordinator came as part of an overall Executive budget of $124,018, an increase of more than half from this year’s levels.

The Executive budget is the one that funds the ASUO president’s staff and offices. PFC Chair Noah Wolf-Prusan rescheduled the Executive hearing from its previously planned date of Jan. 14. Because of this move, the PFC member assigned to work with the Executive, Sen. Laura Hinman, was unable to attend due to illness. Hinman’s absence further reduced the size of the shrunken committee, already short two members after Sen. Erin Altman’s resignation earlier in the evening, since an at-large seat is still vacant. Wolf-Prusan explained thathe rescheduled the meeting because the previous date placed the Executive’s hearing adjacent to the LGBTQA’s hearing, both of which are large and contentious budgets, and he wanted to avoid taking three hours to get through two budgets.

During their presentation, ASUO President Amelie Rousseau asked the committee to consider the funding of the sustainability coordinator as “the creation of a really exciting, beautiful project.”

“I like this position. I think it will benefit the campus,” PFC member Sen. James Dos Santos said.

Others were skeptical of the large new expenditure. “It sounds a little greedy to ask for the full amount now,” said committee member Melissa Cohen. “Why can’t we wait?” Cohen was also curious as to why the funding was being channeled through the executive budget as opposed to being divided among the various groups that the coordinator will be working with.

As the arguments for and against were tossed back and forth between Executive staff, committee members and the other ASUO personalities assembled for the hearing, including Sens. Ian Fielding, Kaitlyn Lange, and Emma Newman, the meeting ran well past midnight. Due to the missing committee members, the late hour, and the short notice provided for the meeting change, some committee members advocated passing the budget with a reduced funding level for the sustainability coordinator and recall the budget at a later date to reconsider the matter.

The majority of the committee, however, wanted to complete the job that evening. “I want to finish this now,” Dos Santos said.

After a brief discussion of stipends, travel budgets, and office supply expenses, the committee amended the Executive budget to fund the sustainability coordinator as a full time position and passed the overall budget, both by a vote of three to one. Cohen was the only nay vote for both the amendment to fund the sustainability coordinator at full-time and the budget as a whole.

The 2010–11 school year is the ASUO’s first with a sustainability coordinator, a position added for a one-year trial period at the end of the previous year. The position exists to harmonize the efforts of various environmental groups on campus in much the same way the Multicultural Center director works with the university’s multicultural student unions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 14:18 by Rockne Andrew Roll and is filed under ASUO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.