[media-credit name=’BEN CLASSON/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]Student-segregated fees could decrease marginally as a result of the Associated Students of Madison Reserve Board meeting Thursday night.

The board decided to take the unknown remaining amount of money from allocable budgets and redirect it to potentially reducing the cost of segregated fees next year.

"Each year, students pay segregated fees, and these fees are not completely spent from allocable budgets, so all this money goes back into a pot," Finance Committee Chair Sree Atluru said. "What we did is we took that money and offset it for next year, so the segregated fee amount will be decreased."

Segregated fees for the current year, listed as $365 per semester — totaling up to a $730 tacked onto each student's tuition in an academic year — could be expected to drop marginally for 2007-2008, Atluru added.

The ASM Reserve Board also debated three group proposals for additional funding, as the ASM Student Elections Commission received funding to set up an electronic method of registering student votes.

"The SEC online system was still not available [last election] and paper voting was far more expensive," SEC Chair Leah Moe said. "Creating a new system was not cheap. We took the cheapest bid we could take."

According to Moe, the last online system that was set up for elections had failed and was "unsalvageable," requiring an all-new system.

Without the funding, Moe said the 2007 spring elections simply would not be possible, as they would not have the money to organize another election done by paper balloting.

"It benefits all students, as the election creates a stable, accessible and safe system for them," SEC representative Polly Pfeiffer said.

According to Pfeiffer, the additional funding would be a one-time expense because the new online system would make elections cheaper and more efficient. She added that this need for funding was due to unforeseeable events, since the previous online systems failure could not have been predicted.

However, before calling the budget to a final vote, Atluru asked to cut $2,000 slotted for advertising from the budget, as well as reduce funding for program supplies and office supplies.

"I don't understand the necessity for funding them at the full amount when they planned a budget for $4,000 to $5,000," Atluru said, regarding the advertising budget. "I want to give them the amount they budgeted for and nothing more."

The ASM Reserve Board approved the cuts and passed the budget of more than $33,000 by a unanimous vote.

The Campus Women's Center requested funds that mistakenly ended up in the hands of the Reserve Board.

"Something happened that was beyond Rich [Sterkowitz] and the Wisconsin Union Directorate," CWC representative Amanda Evenstone said. "We did all the paperwork and something just happened — it just got transferred back to unallocated."

Instead of going to a music committee to pay for their events, Evenstone said the slotted CWC funding landed into the hands of the Reserve Board, and she wanted those funds returned.

"It was a mystery why this happened," Student Services Finance Committee Chair Zach Frey said.

The committee restored CWC's $5581.46 proposal by a unanimous vote, and the Child Care Tuition Assistance Program also had its budget passed unanimously, receiving $40,000.