Members of the Special Fees Committee breathed a sigh of relief Monday morning when Vice President for Business and Finance Warren Madden announced, “I think we have a consensus.”

After working for two months, the committee, which is made up of administrators and student representatives, decided to allocate $39,000 in student fees, rather than $130,000 as planned, to the athletic department in the 1997-98 school year.

The committee will meet on April 10 to vote on the official draft of the proposal and to consider any last-minute funding changes passed by the Government of the Student Body Senate, but Monday’s settlement is a good indication of what will be forwarded to Iowa State President Martin Jischke.

“The committee has come to a consensus to make this recommendation to the president,” Madden said.

The committee agreed to allocate next year’s $4.66 per-student increase in student fees to these places:

* 75 cents to the athletic department

* 93 cents to Recreation Services

* $1.85 to Cy-Ride

* 72 cents to Building Maintenance

* 26 cents to Contingency Reserve

* 10 cents to Memorial Union Operations

* 5 cents to the Student Union Board’s remodeling project

Also included in the agreement was a commitment by Madden, who said he will ask the university to fund recreation facility improvements, including the construction of a climbing wall.

The major disagreement over next year’s apportionment of the $4.66 per-student increase was prompted by a commitment made by the committee in 1995, which raised athletic fees $10 per student over a two-year period — a total increase of $520,000 — as part of a plan to bail out a financially troubled ISU athletic program.

At the time, officials were considering dropping some of the university’s nonrevenue sports.

Athletic department officials haven’t yet said if that will again be a possibility with the loss of $91,000 in budgeted funds.

The increase originally would have provided $260,000, or $5 per student, in fee money to the athletic department in both the 1995-96 and 1996-97 school years.

Last spring, however, the 1996-97 increase was cut to $2.50 per student. Another $2.50 was to be paid during the 1997-98 school year.

“We don’t think, with the changes that have occurred [in the athletic budget], that the students should be subsidizing athletics anymore,” said Kevin Ragland, Graduate Student Senate president.

He said the on-going construction of a new press box at Trice Stadium and the planned artificial turf practice field is evidence that the athletic department was not, as officials had claimed, in dire need of $130,000 more of students’ money.

But Laurie Gustafson, assistant athletic director for business operations, said that is simply not true. Both the press box and practice field projects were funded by outside donations, she said.

“There are no athletic funds going to those projects. They [committee members] have never addressed that with us. We’ve met countless [hours] with these students and this issue was never raised,” she said.

Gustafson said the practice field is being funded 100 percent by donations and the skybox funding is a combination of donations and projected revenues from leasing the seating in skyboxes.

At the start of Monday’s meeting, the committee examined a proposal by Madden to give the athletic department $1 of next year’s $4.66 student-fee increase, with no specifications on how to deal with the remaining $1.50.

“Where does that leave us? It leaves us hung up,” Ragland said.

Madden said his suggestion was a compromise between Ragland’s desire for “zero funding” the athletic department and the $2.50 specified by the 1995 agreement.

“I don’t see $1 as a compromise between $2.50 and nothing. I see it as putting off the inevitable,” Ragland said. He said next year’s committee would again have to deal with the athletic funding issue.

In a students-only session during the meeting, GSB Finance Director Todd Swanson said, “I could see giving [the athletic department] some level of funding, certainly less than $1.” He said the athletic department needed at least some of the $2.50 increase, since officials had “no warning” that the funding would be cut so drastically.

Swanson then said he thought 75 cents would be a satisfactory amount to allot to the athletic department.

The rest of the students agreed, and GSS Treasurer Cheryl Bartleson suggested the committee “issue a statement saying we’re not in support of any more funding increases [for athletics]” in order to avoid future conflicts on the issue.

“So we’re saying the rest of the $2.50 is null and void,” Ragland said.

The students presented their new proposal to the rest of the committee, saying the remaining $1.75 would not be paid because they were only giving 75 cents per student, or $39,000, to the athletic department to “cushion the blow.”

Trying to clarify the situation, Madden said, “Then next year’s fee committee can revisit athletics as they do everything else.”

“It affects us by $91,000. We had budgeted in $130,000 and we’re only going to receive $39,000,” Gustafson said in a phone interview Monday night.

When informed of the committee’s decision, Scott White, manager of business operations and support services for Rec Services, said, “You never like to see anybody take a hit, but when there’s a limited amount of money, it’s a real tough situation to be in. I’m glad they put the money into activities where it can benefit the maximum amount of people.”

White said some of the increased funds would be used for salaries. The recent minimum wage hike will cost the department about $20,000.