A branch of student government passed a budget of more than $13 million for University Health Services in a meeting Thursday.
The Associated Students of Madison Student Services Finance Committee met to address the UHS budget with general agreement among SSFC representatives that it was well put together and reflected effort on the part of UHS. The committee ultimately passed the budget at $13,088,266.
SSFC Rep. Ian Malmstadt said a key reason for his decision to approve the budget was UHS’s efforts to search for funding outside of the committee and explore other possible revenue streams for money for the program.
“I think it’s important for non-allocables to not just rely on students for funding,” Malmstadt said. “UHS dipped a little bit into their reserves, because in their budget they presented a loss, so they will be losing money next year and taking away from the reserves they saved up.”
Malmstadt also said he believes it is good that UHS, which seems to expand their services each year, is not just using this trend to say that it needs students to pay more money. He added he likes seeing UHS is not using students as a last resort and this is a smart idea on their part.
SSFC Rep. Kyle Quagliana said he was impressed by UHS’s summary and how concise the information was compared to that of other organizations the SSFC provides funding for.
“It was just 15 pages of concise information that told us exactly what we needed to know,” Quagliana said. “Sometimes, narratives from other groups are as much as 100 pages and that can be much harder to reference certain things in those narratives.”
SSFC will hear a budget proposal from Recreational Sports in its meeting this coming Monday.
