Before an executive session to discuss President Allie Curtis’ possible impeachment, Student Association members allocated nearly $2 million of the student activity fee.

“I think the budgets went well. I’m hoping appeals go just as well, too,” Comptroller Stephen DeSalvo said in an interview after the meeting. “The Finance Board is going to be working hard between now and then to get everything done.”

The meeting was held at 7:30 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium. More than 60 people — mostly representatives of student organizations — filled the gallery as the general assembly voted on the Finance Board’s budget recommendations. In the end, all 127 bills — totaling $1,780,012.88 — passed.

The meeting took approximately 16 minutes.

There was relatively little discussion about specific bills in each category. The general assembly voted on operating budgets, programming budgets, full-funded bills, non-funded bills and partially funded bills separately.

The general assembly voted to fully fund Student Legal Services and the New York Public Interest Group at a cost of $175,293.77 and $88,000, respectively.

The assembly voted to partially fund operating budgets for organizations such as CitrusTV, SA and University Union. The only significant difference was the budget for MayFest 2014, which was recommended as $23,859 instead of the $33,859 UU requested, about a 29.5-percent decrease.

But UU President Lindsey Colegrove said members within the organization were happy with the funding it received, and she said she had no plans to appeal it.

“We realized we asked for a lot,” Colegrove said in an interview after the meeting. “We’re always looking to expand our programs, so we asked for additional things that haven’t been a part of our program budget before.”

The Finance Board recommended no funding for 55 bills. It did recommend full funding for 48 bills — including those for organizations such as Jerk magazine, La LUCHA and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations.

The general assembly chose to partially fund nine bills.

In previous meetings, the assembly discussed the fairness of the tier system — a set of classifications that determines how much funding a student organization is eligible to receive.

Monday’s meeting appeared to run smoothly. Representatives from student organizations thanked SA members after their budgets were approved. Others seemed to understand why their organization’s budget was denied funding and said they planned to appeal the decision.

Student organizations have until Thursday at 4:30 p.m. to appeal the budget decisions. The process opened early Tuesday. SA has $639,806.28 left for the appeals process.

After a brief round of questioning from students in the audience and assembly representatives about Curtis’ conduct, she called SA into a closed executive session at 8:14 p.m.

Published on April 2, 2013 at 3:50 am

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum