The Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) approved its budget for the 2016-17 year at a council meeting held on Nov. 20.
As council heard, this year’s RRRA executive inherited a nearly $183,000 deficit from the 2015-16 executive.
The loss was largely due to high spending on programming last year, said Hyder Naqvi, the current RRRA president.
“It has to do with a few things, there was an $80,000 concert with a relatively small amount of profit, there was a large expenditure in terms of clubs and societies and events, and there was a large expenditure also on [Fall Orientation],” Naqvi said.
The concert in question was held as a part of RRRA’s Frost week during the winter 2016 semester, and featured performances from DJ Mustard and iLoveMakkonen.
According to Naqvi, the concert took up a large chunk of programming funding last year.
In an article published by The Charlatan in January 2016, Eric Hanson, RRRA’s former operations manager, said he believed the organization overspent from May to December 2015.
Hanson told The Charlatan that all concerns he expressed about overspending were ignored.
While last year’s executive spent just over $210,000 on programming, the current RRRA executive is projecting to spend about $46,000 on programming. According to Zophia Brobio, the vice-president (programming), they are budgeting nearly $28,000 for this year’s residence formal.
“One of the things we’re doing this year is monitoring it very carefully, we’re making sure that we want to avoid the situation we had last year,” Naqvi said. “So we want to make sure when we do plan out our budget, the profit that we’re expecting and the revenue or the expenses are very realistic.”
Graham Pedregosa, RRRA president for the 2015-16 year, could not be reached for comment before time of publication.
RRRA council members voted to approve this year’s budget, with all members voting in favour of the motion.
Members of the constitutional review committee also presented council with a motion to amend sections of the constitutional policy. In particular, the committee was looking to strike RRRA’s bursary program from the policy, as well as the Res Award.
The reason given to council was that, since these awards were never advertised to students, no one applied to them. By striking the bursary program, RRRA would have an extra $600 to allocate to a different award. The vote to amend the constitutional policy passed, with one opposed and one abstaining vote.
Council was also supposed to vote on a motion to elect the RRRA constitutional board. The constitutional board is in charge of reviewing campaign violations during the RRRA election period, and is made up of three members, with three alternates also being selected.
However, the motion was tabled to the next council meeting after not recieving enough nominations to fill the board
—With files from Madison Ranta
