Executives from the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) will be slashing a quarter of their compensations after concerns were raised by councillors over budget cuts in the wake of the Student Choice Initiative.
Motions raised in the Nov. 1 council meeting didn’t see any debate from councillors, unlike October’s, where council was heavily split over major reductions to student scholarships, among other cuts to CASG’s annual budget.
Councillors proposed that executives should trim their own honorariums before piercing through funding for student initiatives in October.
“I think it’s ridiculous that we’re cutting funding to students before cutting the funding for ourselves,” said councillor Rachel Bailak at the time.
No cuts were proposed at the time by executives, even after a councillor asked if he’d be able to put up his own much smaller compensation towards student scholarships.
A month later, executives decided to cut their compensations of $2,000 per year to $1,500 in November’s meeting, owing to a “slight math error,” said vice-president (operations) Matthew Gagne.
CASG’s financial policy mandates that a sum of $5,000 must be saved up in cash by the end of every fiscal year on May 1. Council unanimously voted to cut executive pay in November’s meeting after Gagne explained the budget hadn’t accounted for these mandated savings.
All four executives will therefore each be forfeiting one of their $500 instalments towards their compensation to allow for the mandated savings this year.
Future executives will also be paid $1,500 instead of the previous $2,000, since council voted to add amendments to their policy.
Including this, the executive “honorarium cannot be increased by greater than $250 each year unless an exception is passed” by council, according to the unanimously passed amendment.
CASG will meet again on Nov. 29 to discuss further changes to their constitution, tabled from last Friday’s meeting.
Featured image by Jasdeep Kaur Lally.
