Blowin’ Up the Budget
Where the Concordia Student Union is Spending Your Money
If you think running the Concordia Student Union comes cheap, you might want to take a look at this year’s CSU budget. With a preliminary budget of almost $5 million, most of which comes from student fees, your money gets spent in a lot of ways.
The upcoming Orientation Week festivities, which include concerts, a scavenger hunt and a whole lot of food and drinks, will run an estimated $150,000. That’s down from over $250,000 last year, a result of more thorough budgeting and a general trend towards tightening the financial belt, according to CSU VP Finance Jordan Lindsay, who pointed towards an almost 20 per cent reduction in executive discretionary funds.
“There’s this general trend happening at the CSU of financial constriction,” he said. “You have the same amount of fees coming in, but our [expenses] are increasing [due to inflation]. The books haven’t been closed yet, but we’re expecting a deficit from last year. As a measure to show our own goodwill, we decreased our own expense accounts.”
Another pricey item is the annual handbook and agenda. Costing $65,000, this year is one of the first times that ad revenue has allowed the project to turn a profit. The handbook is expected to result in a surplus of $20,000.
“It actually has fewer ads this year than it did last year, but it brought in way more revenue,” said CSU President Lex Gill. Supplies are limited to the first 14,000 students to pick one up.
You might also notice some things with budget lines last year have been cut off. The Concordia Women’s Caucus has been dismantled, and there is no longer an Outreach budget line. “I think a lot of it is that last year, and sometimes in previous years, budget lines were made because of portfolio names—like, ‘Well, we have a VP Outreach, therefore we must have an outreach budget line, which isn’t necessarily the case,” said VP Advocacy & Outreach Morgan Pudwell.
The CSU is not only your student government, but also has the most employees of any non-administration group on campus, with a total salary, benefit and honorarium budget of $742,610.
All told, the CSU is projecting a surplus this year of $10,992. Of course, you might be asking, “How can I hold the CSU to these numbers?” One of Lindsay’s campaign promises was a real-time update on the CSU’s spending, a development he said will hopefully be launching soon.
You can show up at the monthly CSU meetings and give your reps a piece of your mind if you have questions, or if you’re just not happy with how they’re spending a piece of your wallet.
You can view the entire CSU budget at www.csu.qc.ca
This article originally appeared in Volume 32, Issue 01, published August 30, 2011.
