American River College ASB President Quierra Robey had a message for the Associate Student Body members, which she playfully referred to as her ship, in Thursday’s weekly meeting. “Find your role…be a member of this crew!” The message was stern and pointed, “I agreed to be the captain of this ship, but I’m just steering the boat…you must do the work.”
The message was heard loud and clear, but solemnly reflects the activities of the board, which may be struggling in more ways than one. The absence of some members hurts; the lack of new ideas and redundancy may slow them down but the financial matters are “the reef” that Robey must navigate her boat away from.
As President, Robey has had to make some hard decisions in the last few weeks since the Director of Finance, Kindra Pring, announced the Finance report which displayed a more than -$2,000 difference from its income. According to Pring, the “JBC [Joint Board Committee] designates estimated expenditures based on predicted revenue. Those numbers are put into expenditure accounts, regardless of the amount of actual revenue.” So, basically, an estimated amount of money, based on a prediction of income, is what gets allocated to the ASB for the semester. It just wasn’t enough this semester.
Pring reported three ways to make up the difference in funds, but conceded that there may be a mixture of activities that could also yield the same results. Aggressive fund raising by the ASB was the most rational choice.
The board discussed cutting the amount of people it sends to the Spring general assembly. This semi-annual event “provides a critically important forum for discussion and debate on state-wide issues, multi-district challenges, and for sharing ideas about how to make the community college system a better place,” according to its website at: www.studentsenateccc.org.
There was talk that ARC may send 10 students this semester and will save money by driving rather than flying to the event. There was also more than 25 seats slashed from the March in March budget, which enabled them to participate in the event just under budget and add breakfast as an incentive.
The board was able to finally start approving by-laws after more than four weeks on the agenda.
