The Associated Students of Madison Student Council finally approved a budget Wednesday for the University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation.

The decision ends a five-month-long budgetary fiasco that began last September, when the Student Services Finance Committee originally denied UWRCF eligibility for student segregated fee funding.

But, with Wednesday's budgetary decision, UWRCF representatives headed home in last night's blizzard with more than $147,000 in segregated fees allocated to their organization.

"It's great to be done," UWRCF representative Tim Cruise said after the Student Council cut more than $64,000 to the foundation's proposed budget. "We're not gleeful, but certainly we're going to go drink some beer because we're happy to have it be done."

The largest cut the Student Council made to the proposed budget was $37,000 to UWRCF's staff position salaries.

With the cut, funding for many staff position salaries — including the student event coordinator, bookkeeper, and operations officer — was decreased, and in some cases, zero-funded completely.

The Student Council made cuts to UWRCF's office supplies requests, as well many food and beverage requests for events and programs.

Additionally, cuts to programming line items totaled more than $14,000.

However, the most contentious issue Wednesday was a proposed cut of more than $35,000 that UWRCF requested for building utilities and maintenance.

UW Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam presented the Student Council with a memo from UW Legal Services before the council began debating the UWRCF budget.

SSFC members previously received the memo last November — after the decision to not grant UWRCF eligibility for funding was overturned — and stated organizations could not receive segregated fees for "improvements, maintenance and overhead expenses in non-university facilities," which applies to UWRCF's building.

The memo raised controversy, as many Student Council members questioned the timing of the memo's original release, and whether the university intended to have it be applied to UWRCF and not other organizations.

Berquam, however, refuted such claims, and said she was asked to bring the memo by members of SSFC.

"The memo was given when it was requested," Berquam said, adding she "highly doubted" the UW administration intended to present the memo to have it applied only to UWRCF.

Ultimately, the Student Council decided the choice of whether to fund UWRCF's utilities and maintenance request should be left to the chancellor's office.

The Student Council's decision was based on concerns over allocating funds consistently to all student organizations and ASM representatives raised questions over the validity of the memo's claims, as one ASM representative said the memo's statement was not actually a UW policy.

After ASM approves segregated fee budgets, they move to Chancellor John Wiley for final approval.

"If it's the university's prerogative, it should go to the Chancellor's office," SSFC member Adam Schlicht told the Student Council.