Budget cuts from the Department of Residence might leave Towers residents waiting longer for a bus to campus next year.

CyRide’s Brown Route, which runs from the Towers Residence Halls to campus, will only run every 40 minutes next year unless plans to add funding to keep the current schedule are approved.

Virginia Arthur, associate director of residence life, said the cuts, which will save the Department of Residence over $10,000, were necessary in order to meet budget constraints.

“Each of the areas in the department has a target to reach each year,” she said. “In order to reach my department’s target, we had to cut in some areas.”

Arthur said the Brown Route is not the only Department of Residence service that will receive less funding. Professional development, Student Security and various other programs had their budgets lowered for next year.

However, unlike those programs, the Brown Route might not have to change its service at all. CyRide has expressed interest in using its contingency fund to make up the difference caused by the budget cuts.

Bob Bourne, director of CyRide, said the plan would have to be approved by the City of Ames Transit Board and Iowa State’s Government of the Student Body.

“It’s going to the transit board on Thursday morning, and I assume they will approve it,” he said. “GSB will have it in front of them at their first meeting in the fall.”

If approved, the plan will allow the Brown Route to run its normal schedule, 20-minute cycles from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., except from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., when it runs every 40 minutes. If the plan fails to gain approval, the route would run in 40-minute cycles from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Bourne said the money in the contingency fund comes from unbudgeted income.

“Every year when students pay their fees, a portion goes to CyRide,” he said. “You never know how much of the fees is actually going to come in. Some years our contingency has a deficit, and sometimes we have a surplus. This year, we happen to have a surplus.”

The situation with the Brown Route is exactly the type of problem the contingency fund is to be used for, Bourne said.

“This is a one-time application of the fund. It’s not appropriate to have a long-term funding of the route through this fund,” he said. “This gives the residence hall system all next year to decide what their priorities are and what they want to do in the future.”

Arthur said she thinks CyRide partially funding the Brown Route for a year is a good idea.

“We like that because we’re going to work with the Towers Student Government to find out what the students want,” she said. “We will not be able to continue to completely fund it again. If they want the same service, they’re going to have to explore other options.”

Arthur said some of those options include having Towers residents pay for the service or having Towers Student Government pay for the service.

However, getting a year to ponder the future of the Brown Route might not be that easy. Although Bourne was confident about the Transit Board approving the plan, getting the go ahead from GSB could be a little more difficult.

Matt Craft, GSB President, said he isn’t sure if the GSB senate will approve of CyRide’s intentions when the proposal comes before it next fall.

“That will be a tough call,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see when they get back. Right now we just want to make sure that we can give the senate enough information to make a wise decision.”

Jeremy Williams, GSB finance director, agreed with Craft’s prediction and said he thought the issue would be controversial.

“I don’t know if senate will pass it or not,” Williams said. “I think it will cause a lot of debate, mainly over the issues of how this money will be used to benefit a small student population.”

Craft said he had not yet made up his mind on whether GSB should allow CyRide to use its contingency fund on the Brown Route.

“I want to talk to a few more people to see how this decision came about,” he said. “I want to talk to more students, especially residents of Towers.”

The timing of the Department of Residence’s decision disturbed Craft.

“I’m really upset that it came out this late in the year because we didn’t really have all that much time to speak out against it,” he said. “I hope that this was brought up as early as possible by the Department of Residence.”

Williams said he thinks residence hall administration is going about this particular budget cut the wrong way.

“I think the DOR drug their feet on this and waited too long before they made a decision,” he said. “They should have went through the proper channels of IRHA and TRA.”

Arthur said that if the CyRide funding option is not approved, the Department of Residence will fund the Brown Route fully first semester, but that will leave even less money to spend on the route second semester.

“We’ll do what we need to do second semester,” she said.