{"id":225,"date":"2010-04-05T19:50:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T03:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/?p=225"},"modified":"2010-04-06T00:38:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T08:38:49","slug":"the-ams-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/2010\/04\/05\/the-ams-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"The AMS Deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There comes a time in the life of a blog when the news has dried up. So in lieu of CSSS shenanigans, we present this tidbit from the Mar 31 AMS Council meeting: if the AMS maintains their current spending, they will be going bankrupt &#8220;in 1.87 years starting this May&#8221;. How could this happen? Here are the take-homes from AMS VP Finance Elin Tayyar&#8217;s presentation.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"author ivy\">Ivy:<\/span> As I wasn&#8217;t taking notes at the meeting, some of these numbers might be slightly off. Corrections are welcome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h4>Business revenues are down.<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ams.ubc.ca\/index.php\/businesses\" target=\"_blank\">These are the AMS businesses<\/a>. This year&#8217;s budget projected revenues of $936,000. However, the actual revenue for this year is closer to $700,000, resulting in a <strong>deficit of $200,000+<\/strong>. This is in sharp contrast with the 2008\u201309 fiscal year, where the budgeted revenue was $865,000 while the actual revenue was $1,114,981. The blame for this is being laid at the feet of UBC, who has stopped referring events to AMS Catering and now refers them to UBC Catering instead.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"author ivy\">Ivy:<\/span> Having volunteered around campus enough to have eaten both AMS- and UBC-catered food, I find AMS lunches less fancy but more delicious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h4>The budget is inflexible.<\/h4>\n<p>The large majority of the budget is non-discretionary: money earmarked for, say, Student Services can&#8217;t go anywhere else. No matter how much the AMS can&#8217;t afford to put money into some things, they have to keep putting money there. The annual deficit is actually only 2% of the AMS&#8217;s $12 mil budget. But as most of that $12 mil is earmarked, the amount of spending the AMS can cut to exorcise the demonic deficit is regrettably small.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_226\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-226\" style=\"width: 171px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/files\/2010\/04\/onmyouji-elin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-226    \" title=\"Elin the Exorcist\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/files\/2010\/04\/onmyouji-elin-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"Elin the Exorcist\" width=\"171\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/files\/2010\/04\/onmyouji-elin-228x300.jpg 228w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/files\/2010\/04\/onmyouji-elin.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 171px) 100vw, 171px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-226\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Elin the Exorcist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h4>The AMS doesn&#8217;t have money to spend.<\/h4>\n<p>Although the AMS does have a significant reserve fund, most of that is untouchable due to the SUB&#8217;s insurance policy. In short: 25% of the SUB&#8217;s value <em>must<\/em> be kept in the bank at all times. This leaves the AMS with roughly <strong>$500,000 in money it can spend<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s $500,000 of backup funds to spend, and $200,000+ of backup funds being spent each year. No wonder the AMS was headed for swift bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<h4>What does this mean?<\/h4>\n<p>There will be a lot of budgetary cuts in the coming year. The biggest news-maker is the merger of AMS Safety and Safewalk. Safewalk is the biggest spender of all the capital-s Student Services, and the merger means saving $50,000+ a year. There will also be internal restructuring and cuts within the AMS administration, including salary reductions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There comes a time in the life of a blog when the news has dried up. So in lieu of CSSS shenanigans, we present this tidbit from the Mar 31 AMS Council meeting: if the AMS maintains their current spending, they will be going bankrupt &#8220;in 1.87 years starting this May&#8221;. How could this happen? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ninetycubed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}