General Fees

1. Eligibility of Student Organizations Applying for General Fee Funds
   1. Organizations eligible for General Fee funding shall be the same as those eligible to apply for Special Fees, as provided by these By-Laws. Agencies of the Association applying for General Fee funding must be financially independent from the Association proper. No Association agency which appears as a source of funds to the Association Operating Budget shall be eligible to receive funds from a General Fee.

   2. A non-Association organization which is a subsidiary of, or receives organizational or basic programming funding from, another organization shall be treated as a department of the parent organization, and not an organization in its own right.

   3. The Senate has the right to enforce the limit on the amount of funding an organization can receive by classifying together organizations which have substantially identical purposes or memberships, especially (but not exclusively) in cases where they were originally part of one organization.

2. Allocations and Uses of General Fee Funds
   1. No organization may receive funding from more than one Association Board. Board members and officers should offer their expertise to other Boards whenever needed for the purpose of evaluating requests for funding.

   2. The maximum amount of General Fee funding which may be received by an organization during a fiscal year is $6000.

   3. Any organization which receives more than $4200from any one General Fee during a fiscal year must either place a Special Fee request on the ballot for the following fiscal year, or successfully obtain a valid petition of ten percent of the members of the Association towards that end, in order to be eligible to receive General Fee funding for the following fiscal year. If such an organization successfully obtains a valid petition of ten percent of the members of the Association for its Special Fee request, but that Special Fee request does not appear on the ballot, that organization shall be eligible to receive a maximum of $4200from any one General Fee for the following fiscal year.

   4. An organization whose Special Fee request fails to be approved by the members of the Association shall be eligible to receive no more than 80 per cent of its net fee request or $6000(of which no more than $4200may be received from any one General Fee), whichever is less, during the fiscal year for which the Fee was requested.

3. Authorizing Existing General Fees
   1. No later than the second regularly scheduled meeting of Winter quarter, the Appropriations Committee must give notice of legislation listing the base amount and the statement of purpose of each existing General Fee, and the percentages by which they may be changed in the coming General Election.

   2. The percentages must consist of a list of two to five numbers in the form ``0%, , '', and must include 0%and . Different General Fees may have different percentages.

   3. If this legislation is not passed by the last regularly-scheduled meeting of Winter quarter, the percentages from the previous year will be used.

   4. In applying each Fee's percentage to its base amount, the Elections Commission must round to the nearest whole dollar. These dollar amounts are the options for setting the amount of each General Fee.

4. Proposals to Create, Abolish, or Make Large Modifications in General Fees
   1. Proposals to create a new General Fee or to make a modification to the base amount of an existing General Fee must include a proposed base amount and statement of purpose. Proposals to abolish a General Fee need only specify which fee to abolish.

   2. Substantive changes to the statement of purpose must be approved in the same manner as a change in base amount.

   3. Proposals may be linked; for instance, the creation of one General Fee may be linked to the reduction in base amount of another General Fee. Linked proposals are voted on as a unit. The Senate must assign a descriptive title to each linked proposal.

5. Annual Allocations
   1. Any Board which makes allocation recommendations one year for the following year's General Fee must complete such recommendations by the end of Winter quarter. No member of or body of the Senate may then publicize any further recommendations or intended recommendations from the beginning of Spring quarter until after the Spring general election is over.

   2. In making those recommendations, the Board should assume that the size of the General Fee will not change, and report out allocations with a sum corresponding to the annual allocations from that Fee in the current fiscal year, unless the Senate instructs the Board otherwise. The Board may entertain applications from organizations seeking Special Fees, and will give them the same scrutiny it would give non-Special Fee groups. However, it should report them out separately and not include their potential allocations in the sum.

   3. No later than the first regularly-scheduled meeting of Spring quarter, the Senate will approve an overall budget for each General Fee. This budget will delineate categories of expenditure, including but not limited to: a fixed amount for the operating expenses of the Board allocating the Fee; a fixed Fee refund rate and amount; various funds for disbursement, as defined in the Board's By-Laws discretionary funds, if any, must be specified as a minimum percentage of the net amount of the Fee); and allowance for transfers from the Fee's Budget reserve. The budget must add up to the base amount of the Fee. General Fee refunds must be calculated in the same manner as Special Fee refund rates, unless otherwise specified by the Senate. The overall budget may not be amended after the Spring General election, except by a two-thirds vote of the membership of the Senate.

   4. At the meeting when the Spring election results are certified, or no later than the next regularly-scheduled meeting, the Senate must approve budgets for the following fiscal year, including any allocations to student groups, for the Boards administering General Fees. The proposed allocations must be made available to all members of the Senate at least 96 hours prior to the commencement of the Senate meeting at which they will be considered.

6. Minimum Amount of General Fees

   The minimum amount for any General Fee, reflecting the level below which it is administratively impractical to collect a Fee, is $4000. The limit that applies to all General Fees in a given election is that limit in effect at the opening of polls of the election. However, if a General Fee drops below the limit one year, it must rise above the same limit in the next year in order not to be abolished, regardless of any subsequent changes in the limit.

7. General Fee Budget Reserve Funds
   1. For each General Fee, a General Fee Budget Reserve Fund must be maintained as a distinct account within the Students' Organizations Fund. At the close of each fiscal year, any excess of income over expenditures must be credited to, or any excess of expenditures over income must be charged to, that Fee's Budget Reserve Fund. Expenditures are defined as those funds actually disbursed from the Board's accounts with the Students' Organizations Fund by the close of the fiscal year, plus any funds due an individual or organization for expenses previously incurred in accordance with an allocation or within the operating budget of the Board, and the existence of which is known to the Director of the at Board at the close of the fiscal year.

   2. The Senate will enact a Financial Policy specifying the target level of the Budget Reserve for each General Fee. When approving the overall budget of a General Fee, the Senate must supplement or offset the income from the Fee with transfers from or to that Fee's Budget Reserve, in order to bring the level of the Budget Reserve to its target.

   3. Any funds allocated by a Board disbursing General Fee funds which are not expended in accordance with the original allocation, and which are subsequently recovered by that Board after the close of the fiscal year in which they were originally allocated, must be credited to that Board's General Fee Budget Reserve Fund.

   4. Expenditures of funds from a General Fee Budget Reserve Fund may be made only through the budget of the appropriate Board authorized in these By-Laws to receive funds from that General Fee. All expenditures of funds from a Budget Reserve Fund (including the adoption of any budget or subsequent budget modification which requires such an expenditure) must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

8. The amounts allocated to each Board and/or fund shall be treated as separate Fees for the purpose of granting refunds.