Brad Monroe knew at a young age that his classmate Stephen DeSalvo had a knack for leading.

DeSalvo was elected student council president in the seventh grade while Monroe was also on the council, and he demonstrated the same traits then that Monroe sees in him today.

“He just has a combination of intelligence and self-confidence when he speaks,” said Monroe, a junior finance major. “He was a good president, good leader, easy to support. Everyone was behind him.”

DeSalvo, a junior chemical engineering major, brought that leadership ability with him to Syracuse University. DeSalvo, who is currently completing his first term as Student Association comptroller, is running for re-election next week. Students can vote on MySlice from Nov. 12-15.

As comptroller, DeSalvo leads SA’s Finance Board, which is in charge of allocating the student fee to various campus groups and organizations. When an organization requests funding, it must submit a budget, which is carefully reviewed for merit by the board. After funding recommendations are made, budgets move to the SA assembly for a vote.

“It’s a lot of work,” DeSalvo said. “But you definitely see the impact.”

Before being elected comptroller, DeSalvo served on the Finance Board for a semester and immediately demonstrated interest in taking on a larger role. Jeff Rickert, a graduate of SU and current graduate accounting student, served as comptroller before DeSalvo and immediately recognized his successor’s potential.

While DeSalvo was still on the Finance Board, Rickert made an effort to show him the ins and outs of what being comptroller required — the behind-the-scenes duties, the extra work done outside Finance Board meetings.

“On the backroom stuff that you have to do yourself, I worked with him,” Rickert said. “Right from when he was first elected to the assembly, it was obvious that he had something else. He has always shown willingness to do what needs to be done.”

With help from Rickert, DeSalvo was able to step into the position without feeling overwhelmed.

“Speaking with Jeff, he taught me a lot about what the position entailed and what the responsibilities were,” DeSalvo said. “So going into the job, I knew what they were. I really liked the process and I liked the ability to be more involved.”

While in the general assembly, even before serving on the Finance Board, DeSalvo showed commitment to the budgeting process when he created the university’s budget website, yourstudentfee.syr.edu. The site shows the amount of money requested by each type of group and the total funding ultimately allocated, helping to make the process more transparent, Rickert said.

Designing the student fee website wasn’t much of a challenge for DeSalvo, who also runs his own Web design company, DeSalvo Web Sites. He started the business in the sixth grade, designing a site for his uncle’s company, local janitorial firm Corporate Maintenance Systems, Inc. Today, he maintains about 40 clients, mostly small businesses that don’t have significant excess funding to devote to Web design.

Growing up in the Syracuse suburb of Cicero, DeSalvo always wanted to attend SU. His father and grandfather went to SU, and he first started attending events at the Carrier Dome when he was in middle school.

As SA comptroller, DeSalvo is required to serve 20 office hours per week at minimum, where he works with groups that request funding for special programming outside the approved budget. Sometimes groups come in to talk about the budgeting process, or to discuss the feasibility of acquiring special funding, DeSalvo said.

But the process picks up during budget season, when the Finance Board looks at 150 to 200 proposed budgets. Budgets were due Oct. 19 and reviewed during the past two weeks.

“I’m in here 13 hours a day,” DeSalvo said. “Just inputting stuff into the computer, making sure my Finance Board is looking over the budgets, getting the budgets to them on time.”

DeSalvo also oversees Finance Board budget deliberations, schedules budget hearings for groups and presides over the hearings. When a group appeals a decision, DeSalvo handles that as well.

The job is an ongoing commitment, but DeSalvo does his best to maximize productivity throughout his Board, ensuring that the best decisions are made.

One of the challenges of serving as comptroller, Rickert said, is providing significant funds to meet the needs of all organizations. During Rickert’s time in office, SA was asked for nearly $1 million in funding at a point when it had only $400,000 to allocate.

The position requires an unbiased perspective, which DeSalvo maintains by not participating in any organization that requests funding, Rickert said.

“It’s not easy,” Rickert said. “There are hard decisions to be made. Consistency is so important, making sure you give each group a fair shake. And Stephen understands where things are wrong, he has ideas, he listens to people. He’s not some dominant dictator.”

Published on November 6, 2012 at 2:19 am

Contact Kevin: kmprisei@syr.edu