A $25,000 amendment to the operating budget proposed by director Andrew Fryer at the Wilfrid Laurier University Studentsโ Union board of directors meeting on April 13 has resulted in confusion and discrepancy within the union.
After the board approved the capital expenditures and student services portions of the budget, Fryerโs amendment, which was passed 6-4, added $25,000 to the boardโs budget for a market research project.
The intention is that WLUSU will hire an external firm to conduct this research but further details, including where exactly these funds will come from, is still unknown.
โI donโt really know at this point,โ said board chair Saad Aslam.
โNothing was removed. Everything else stayed the same and everything else was passed prior, so this was just $25,000 added on.
โTo be honest, Iโm not too sure how this will work out,โ said Aslam.
Fryer, who is pushing the board to re-evaluate WLUSUโs ends โ overall goals that guide the union โ ran on a platform of conducting a census to gauge student input on the future direction of the studentsโ union.
Though he says that the โkernels were thereโ to put forth some kind of market research proposal, the amendment was more of a spur of the moment decision.
โI saw this budget going by, itโs sort of like your last chance to get any resources for big projects and if I had missed this bus, I would have been out there handing out my own survey that I typed up on my laptop,โ said Fryer.
Those in attendance at the meeting were caught off-guard by the amendment, as they had no idea such a proposal would be coming from director Fryer.
โI was kind of surprised because we were charged with creating a zero-balance budget,โ said WLUSU president Laura Sheridan.
This means that after taking into account student fees and business profits the studentsโ union should break even on the services they offer.
Now that the amendment has been added, the unionโs budget has a $25,000 deficit.
Fryer noted that, as the governing body of the corporation, the board is exempt from the rules of WLUSU, including zero-balance based budgeting.
โWhen we pass a budget for ourselves, we can create a budget that we knowingly know we need to take a loan out for,โ said Fryer.
โThe boardโs priorities are above those of the rest of the corporation. โThe worst case scenario … is that weโll have to nibble away at the operating budget, that of management, and find the money in those places.โ
Stephanie Francis, a director who voted against the amendment, noted that though management is obligated to fulfill the requests of the board, they need to be considerate of what they are asking them to do.
โWe do need to take into consideration the feasible aspects of our requests,โ said Francis. โI donโt think we should set up our management team to fail.โ
Naz Abdulla, assistant vice-president of finance, noted that he is working with the WLUSUโs controller Larry Wraith to find the most effective way to move forward with this project that doesnโt include shaving away from Waterlooโs central budget.
Though WLUSU has about $9,000 in reserve funds, Abdulla says that because they are a not-for-profit they should break even every year.
โWe didnโt go the route of communicating how not-for-profits budgets work [to the board], so I think that was the missing link on our part,โ said Abdulla.
โBut from a logical sense it should have been understood.โ
Abdulla said that right now there are two options he is contemplating: asking the board to re-amend the $25,000 of allotted market research funds or combine this project with one management is planning to undertake.
$7,500 has been approved for a public affairsโ research project.
Though Fryer โsee[s] the board as taking the reigns on this 100 per cent,โ the board chair and management think that such a project should be undertaken by the public affairs department with board consultation.
โWhen you look at the job descriptions and what each group is supposed to do, it makes sense [for management] to do something as operational as this projectโฆ. It specifically says in JRโs job description that he is the key person for market research,โ said Sheridan.
Joel Robinson, vice-president of public affairs, hopes that the board and management will be able to collaborate and work together on these marketing projects, using both sets of funds.
โI donโt think market research should be strictly under board or management,โ said Robinson.
โItโs something that we all need to find out, whether itโs the boardโs mandate to represent
students or the management groupsโ job to do the operational side.
However, Francis notes that the cost-effectiveness of the market research is something that the union needs to take into account when deciding how the project will move forward from here.
โThatโs quite a large sum of money,โ said Francis.
โMore consideration needs to be taken into if more โฆ cost-efficient substitutes [can be found].โ