The Apportionment Board was forced to allocate an additional $40,346 out of the Student Activities Reserve Account to the fee-funded boards during Thursday night’s meeting.

The Business and Budget Office sent the AB an e-mail stating the university accounts that still hold money after June 30, the end of fiscal year 2009, will be depleted. This requirement had previously been overlooked.

The AB adviser Ted Hart said as long as he has been involved with the AB, this has not been a problem. Hart said this occurred this year because of the build up of the other accounts the university holds.

With the economic recession, many accounts were set aside to prepare for any emergency. In past years, the university reserve accounts were never full enough for this requirement to be put in to place.

Since the budgets for the four fee-funded boards had recently been approved, the AB asked the boards what each still needed after parts of their budgets were cut. The Student Recreation Center had cut allocations for a nine-hole Frisbee golf course. The AB voted for the $15,000 course. The AB also approved $16,190 for equipment for the Rec Center.

The productions area of the University Board was allocated $7,447 for a list of equipment including two-way radios, loudspeakers, a countdown clock and other items. The UB’s marketing committee was also allocated $300 for advertising, which was cut from its previous budget.

Finally, the AB was allocated $1,500 to pay for a new computer for the Student Activities Center’s secretary’s office. Each additional allocation was unanimously approved. Hart and the AB Chair Tiffany Turner said the allocations were spent fairly because the Student Activities Reserve Account was accumulated solely by the student activity fee.

“The students paid that money with the understanding it was going to be used for these purposes, either for programming or for services for one of the fee-funded boards, and our thoughts are it needs to be used for the benefit of the students,” Hart said.

Little discussion was had over the additional allocation, which Turner said was because the items were already presented to the AB. She said the board members were familiar with the requests.

While the AB approved the allocations, the Student Senate also has to approve these matters as individual bills at its next meeting.

In other business, the AB also approved two line-item transfers. The AB approved the transfer of $300 from the UB budget for the movies fund. This will fund prizes for a film festival hosted by the UB. This amount will also pay for every member of the audience to have a DVD of the student films shown during the festival. The festival will be held at 4 p.m. on Saturday.

The second line-item transfer pertained to the UB lectures committee.

Mike Hilty, a representative from UB, explained $2,080 needed to be transferred into the commodities to move the line item out of the red. The negative balance occurred because of the purchase of the prizes for the “Last Lecture Series” hosted last week. Hilty said moving this money would give them $351 extra for any other item that may come up within the last couple weeks of classes.

The AB will have its last meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday night in the Arcola/Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached at 581-7942 or at kzyskowski@eiu.edu.