News

After a six-minute meeting by the OUSA Executive, the 2015 budget was passed on Monday 8 September 2014. The OUSA Executive assured Critic that further discussions had gone on behind the scenes, but we can’t report on secret chat and are skeptical of how much discussion did occur.

The budget has a deficit of $1,278.

Among various other changes from the original proposed 2015 budget, the idea of a new Executive Assistant was cut entirely. Critic speculates that this means the existing team of eleven may have to do their job next year. A last–minute change was also made by the Postgraduate Officer to restore his budget line to $5,000, making it the same as this year.

In 2014 OUSA Events have operated at a profit of $27,833 and 2015 is budgeted to make $84,248. The 2014 Organisational Plan budgeted for a loss of $8,000 for this year’s Craft Beer and Food Festival, but the latest figures in the 2015 plan show that the Festival is looking to lose at least $16,000. The OUSA Finance Officer said that this was because OUSA did not receive an expected $30,000 of funding from the Dunedin City Council.

Critic notes that the Craft Beer and Food Festival is forecast to make the greatest loss this year, using up more time than anything else, and appears to have the lowest involvement of students out of all the events. OUSA expect it to start making money in 2015 though, with an anticipated profit of $632.

Art Week was expected to make a loss of $18,400, but instead cost $12,600. OUSA expects it to be bigger and better next year with an anticipated cost of $18,400.
O-week is budgeted to make $120,120 in 2015, $34,091 more than this year. Re-O-week made a loss of $15,100 this year and is expected to make a loss of $9,553 next year. Critic suspects this is due to the realisation that not having anything on for the week doesn’t actually cost much.

Similarly to 2014, Critic is budgeted to cost OUSA approximately $62,000 a year and Radio One to cost $147,000. This is inclusive of allocating sales income to the two services.

The total University contribution budgeted for in 2015 is $3,046,440. This equates to $159,492 less than last year being given to OUSA. The OUSA Finance Officer explains that, “The University is under cost pressures.” He says “until this year, over the last couple of years, OUSA has not had to deal with that ‘belt tightening process.’”

The University also specfied that the $45,000 to go towards NZUSA membership must not come from Service-Level Agreement funds and that this money needs to found from elsewhere.

The University said the reason for this was merely “The University is regulated in the services it can fund OUSA to provide for students.” The Finance Officer believes this may be because of the “high level of political heat” surrounding the worth of the NZUSA membership, or that the NZUSA services “only really benefit Executive members rather than students being directly involved.”

The Executive prioritised certain items to be added to services in 2015. $5,000 is suggested to go towards OUSA’s 125th birthday celebrations, but no plans are currently in place. They are “hoping for a nice message from the Queen.” $10,000 is going towards training and travel for the Executive. Maybe they’ll know what they’re doing next year. One can only hope.

$2,000 is to go towards volunteer workshops and volunteer reward programmes. $1,500 is to go on enhancing the class representative system. An additional $5,000 will go on the Critic and Radio 1 volunteer training programme because “they have more volunteer offers than they can manage.” $3,000 to go towards the Curate Campus programme, planned to compliment the Art Week in Second Semester.
$5,000 will go on hiring an OUSA intern for semester one as, they say, “it has a particularly heavy workload.”

The Executive have decided on additional items to add to the budget, should the University decided to contribute the extra amount required to the SLA agreement. In order of priority, these are: $70,000 towards campus groups; $21,000 towards satellite campus support; $10,000 towards International Games eventsl; $22,680 towards additional staff at Critic; $9,000 towards more satellite campus support; and $14,000 towards Radio One forming projects with various University departments.

Radio One has suggested $3,000 to put towards practicum experiences for music degree students and $7,000 towards practicum for MFCO students. Critic questions whether it should be OUSA paying when they generally don’t support academic pursuits and leave these up to the University.

Campus group spending is to include “social cause groups, service and volunteer providers and faculty based boards and clubs,” says the Finance Officer. “It ties into the Memorandums of Understanding we have been working on with a lot of clubs over the last year.” The Finance Officer believes OUSA should give as much support as possible to campus groups, “Auckland University allows $150,000 for all their clubs and societies.” When asked if they would look at assisting the Otago Business School Case Club, following their loss of funding for international competitions, the Finance Officer said, “I personally would be open to the argument that the Case Club could be supported with these funds.”

The budget also says that new staff will be starting on lower rates at OUSA to allow for existing staff to receive expected increases so “hiring is likely to be problematic and risk to continuity of service through staff retention at greater risk.” This is expected to save approximately $30,000.

The referendum for the passing the 2015 OUSA Budget opens online today and the full budget is available on the OUSA website, under the Finances tab.