PSGA Blog Number 24: Final Meeting Includes New Budget and Potential Campus Barber Shop

Purchase Student Government Association President Kevin Collymore bid farewell to the Senate this week in his final State of the Union speech. He said that he felt fortunate to have worked with the PSGA throughout the year, and that he was confident in those fulfilling executive roles in the future.

“The PSGA was much better than it was last year,” he said. “My goal was to put the student government back on its feet, and now it can start running again.”

Finance Coordinator Nico Marceca, who was elected to serve as president next year, said he is looking forward to his administration and already has plans in place. “My biggest goal is to bring together all the programs and use all of the resources that we have.”

Marceca also said he wants to make students more aware of what is happening on campus. “I want to have a central area of information, like a board outside of the PSGA office, which is updated weekly with events that are both PSGA and non-PSGA related.”

In his executive report, Collymore said that there is a possibility that a barber shop/salon will be coming to Campus Center North in the fall. According to Collymore, it would be in the small room where the vending machines used to reside.

“The Purchase College Association wants to expand entrepreneurship,” he said. “They’re not sure how it’s going to run, but I can see it being X-vendor comes on Monday, and then X-vendor on Tuesday, and so on.” He also said that this is something that other SUNY schools are starting to do.

Marceca distributed to the Senate the completed 2010-2011 budget. When going through the document with senators, he mentioned the temporary holding account, which he said contains monetary safety nets within the budget.

In the grant section, Marceca said that $10,000 was left in the temporary holding account so that money would not have to be taken from the general reserves.

“A lot of what we did in the finance committee this year was pooling money to go towards different kinds of programming and initiatives on campus,” he said. He specifically mentioned the Campus Initiative Fund, which aids in paying for events like The Rocky Horror Purchase Show and The Vagina Monologues.

In addition, he said that the Security Relief Fund was established to take care of the issue of security at events so that clubs and organizations don’t have to carry that burden.

Marceca also said that his favorite addition to the budget is the Steve Sabel Hammock Initiative Fund. He said that the PSGA would be taking responsibility to ensure that the hammocks get replaced and go up at the appropriate times, thanks to the initiatives taken by former senator of Outback, Steve Sabel.

The Senate agreed that the PSGA would pay for six hammocks, and that the college would pay for an additional six hammocks, so the cost from the PSGA would be $1,200.

The budget included certain clubs and organizations seeing increases in the budget. Marceca justified certain increases by saying that WPSR needs a new transmitter, and that Tech Services is saving up for a new mixer in the DJ booth, which will need to be replaced in five to six years.