Updated at 3:33 a.m. CST March 24

The Government of the Student Body approved a bill to give $500 to the city of Ames as a goodwill gesture to help pay for satellite voting in the April 5 special election.

The special election will include both a reduction of City Council terms from four years to two years and hotel/motel tax increase.

Ryan Doll, Towers Residence Association senator, said the money GSB chose to allocate to the city is not for the election in general, but for the satellite elections which were requested for the GSB-supported City Council term limits portion of the ballet.

Brad Weed, College of Engineering senator, was not in support of the gesture to the city.

“I am not supporting this bill because I think the city should get used to pulling the weight of all of its citizens,” he said.

Bronwyn Beatty-Hanson, Graduate College senator, said the $500 is a small cost that would send a big gesture to the Ames residents.

David Stout, College of Business senator, said $500 is not a small amount of money. He said the senate had just spent a great deal of time with the regular allocations process and cut funding for many organizations that wanted less money than this.

The meeting lasted more than seven hours because of the discussions on the regular allocations process. At the beginning of the meeting, 81 different clubs and organizations were presented as a package bill to receive funding as suggested by the GSB Finance Committee.

Senators divided out 24 of the clubs, including some which were originally slated as non-funded clubs. The senate then went through each one of these items one by one.

Senators commented on GSB’s lack of money when debating additional funding for the groups.

The ISU Financial Counseling Clinic was one group debated. The group wanted to receive an additional $20,000 to cover the cost of hiring a new graduate assistant. Doug Borkowski, the clinic’s only graduate assistant, is graduating and his position needed to be filled.

Kristi Kramer, director of the finance committee, said she did not understand why GSB would allot an additional $20,000 when GSB was already in a tight budgetary time.

Dan Becker, treasurer, said many groups have been cut this year and a lot of groups have not received funding at all. He said the clinic should be happy with the $33,451.50 originally suggested by the Finance Committee.

The request for additional funding was turned down and received the initially suggested amount.

“It’s status quo, we are getting the same funding as last year,” Borkowski said.

Many groups were sent back to the Finance Committee. The committee plans to meet Monday to discuss possible changes in funding and line items to sent back to it. The revamped group allocations will then be approved or rejected at a later GSB meeting.

Tony Borich, College of Design senator, said a meeting to discuss putting out a positive message for Veishea will be 9 p.m. Thursday in the Commons Dining Room of the Memorial Union.