Buffer funding approvals worth expense, Senate says

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate recently approved $12,070 in buffer funding to the Concert Board to bridge the gap between budgeted and projected costs of this year's Spring Fling.

This approval follows the Senate's decision to grant Film Series an additional $8,400 for this semester's films and Lecture Series $1,500 to cover expenses for the upcoming Spike Lee lecture.

According to TCU Treasurer Josh Belkin, the buffer fund expenditures will not significantly affect TCU finances, since the Treasury allots $70,000 each year for unforeseen expenses.

Historically, $50,000 has been devoted to buffer funding, $10,000 to the new group fund, and $10,000 to the capital expenditures fund, which sponsors major one-time purchases. Belkin said, however, "there's nothing that says you can't split it up 60, 5, and 5."

The amount of money that is reserved for buffer funding is arbitrary, Belkin said. Any remaining money in the account gets pooled into the general Treasury surplus at the end of the year.

According to Belkin, a slightly greater amount of buffer funding has been used this year than previous years but the new group and capital expenditure portions have been relatively underused.

The Senate's Allocations Board (ALBO) grants buffer funding to groups that want to put on unplanned events ALBO finds worthwhile.

The buffer fund exists so that ALBO need not approve budget requests which including expensive events that are unlikely to be held. "It ties up all this wasted money," Belkin said. "When some amazing opportunity comes along, then the buffer fund kicks in when we're sure its going to happen."

Groups are not supposed to count on receiving additional funds when they set their budgets, however.

"We never count on being able to spend more money than we have," Lecture Series Co-Chair Jillian Rennie said.

Lecture Series initially requested $3,500 in buffer funding and asked to charge $7 per ticket for the Spike Lee lecture. Belkin said, however, since the benefits of a lower ticket price would only go to the 600 students allowed to attend, ALBO only allotted $1,500 and requested that Lecture Series charge $10. "Those who directly received the benefit of going should bear a larger percentage of the event's total costs," he said.

When ALBO approves groups' initial budgets, Belkin said, "we don't assume they're going to get the superstars." ALBO approved Lecture Series' request because "we knew it was going to sell out and we knew people would pay $10," he said.

Concert Board is typically the largest recipient of TCU funding. Prior to the buffer funding request, this year's Spring Fling had a budget of $100,775.00 -- not including an expected $9,750 in ticket sales. Because inclement weather forced the cancellation of last year's Spring Fling, "we wanted to make [this year's] as big as possible," Concert Board Co-Chair Jason Slomovitz said.

According to Slomovitz, "there are certain groups that pull the whole school together, but they would have nowhere to go" without buffer funding.

Slomovitz's co-chair, Adam Drobnis, said when formulating the Concert Board budget, "we don't plan on buffer funding, but we take into account that we're probably going to ask for it."

Since student organizations' budgets are approved during the spring of the previous school year, the projected expenses do not always reflect the priorities of the groups' current leadership.

Film Series' budget went over this year in part because the group was showing more movies than it had in previous years.

"The budget hadn't been updated in a while, so it was always going to be wrong," Film Series President David Kramer said. "It always covered three quarters of the year."

Film Series' main expenses are movie costs, shipping, advertising, repairs, and paying the University for renovations to Barnum 008. In making next year's budget, Film Series focused its requests on movie costs. "If we have to buffer fund, it won't be for movies," Kramer said.

All of the groups agreed that the current buffer funding system is effective. "If every group went in requesting an insane amount of money, there wouldn't be enough to go around," Kramer said.