Tired of all my columns about how Student Government doesn’t want to fund Library West? Well, this column is about how SG wants to fund Library West now.
I woke up to an email sent at 6:23 a.m. Surprise, surprise: There is going to be an SG budget committee meeting at 8 a.m., in an hour and a half. Whatever chain of disasters led to no one giving us proper notice of the meeting is beyond me.
As always, the SG calendar on our website was blank because we love transparency. The late email was also in violation of our Senate Rules and Procedures since the budget chair is supposed to send out to all senators any legislation at least a day in advance, so that’s disappointing.
It’s not surprising though, given we also broke the rule earlier in the year during the Smith Meyers veto incident (the Senate blindly voted to uphold a couple vetoes and then we received the actual text of what we voted on the day after).
Democracy is funny like that.
Anyhow, attached to the email was a reserves transfer to be reviewed. In case you’re not familiar, “reserves” are kind of like SG’s contingency fund. Every year when we make our budget, we set aside money to go toward the reserves and we usually use the reserves money toward one-time expenses.
What were we dipping into the reserves to fund this time? Ah, a 24/7 Library West.
So flash back to July 18, 2017. A young Zach Chou with a lot fewer white hairs gets up to the podium for public debate. This was at the very start of the long period of Library West woes.
As recorded by the minutes: “Senator Chou is concerned about Library West being compared to Newell Hall with these study spaces having different hours. He suggests that Library West be funded at least for the Fall for it to be open 24/7. He suggests a doing a Reserves Transfer to fund it.” Former President Smith Meyers came up to speak after me and dismissed the idea.
What I said was in the initial study comparing Newell Hall to Libary West. The haters in the majority party told me we couldn’t dip into the reserves for things of recurring nature. I suggested we provide funding in the context of the study, since that was more of a one-time thing. But haters are haters, and I got shot down.
This past summer, we heard a lot about how we shouldn’t have SG money going toward libraries.
Now, we’re here. SG wants to go and fund Library West with SG money and using the method I suggested last year. Is this what it feels like to have the last laugh?
Here is the twist: This isn’t SG permanently funding Library West’s overnight hours; this is us kicking the can a little further down the road because we’re going to do another study. We’re funding Library West just for this year. Then the Provost is providing the funding for two years.
So, basically we’re good until the end of the 2020-2021 fiscal year while we do another study, but if there’s no increase of overnight hour usage (which is what the Provost is looking for), we’re back to square one.
Look, I’m happy SG has realized its mistake and is kind of atoning for it temporarily. It’s just still beyond me why they are making such a big deal of funding Library West when it’s literally just $160,000 a year. That SG concert tonight? That’ll costs $98,000 dollars (to put our spending in perspective).
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have any fun around town, but given how much we spend in the grand scheme of things on concerts and events, this is a lot of drama for what should be a relatively minor budget line item.
But then again, I suppose writing seven columns is a bit dramatic too… But I’m a proud drama llama.
Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column focuses on Student Government.
