UW-Madison officials hope to break ground in the Southeast Recreational Facility expansion project next month, the final approval of which was passed Wednesday evening.
After a five-year process, the Student Services Finance Committee passed the $1,435,000 budget unanimously, marking the culmination of the renovation project.
\It just affirms what we're doing,"" said Terry Virlee, the accountant for the UW-Madison Division of Recreational Sports.
In November 1997, UW-Madison students voted to support the renovations, with a vote of 73.6 percent to 26.4 percent. In the referendum, the total cost of the expansion was $3.1 million, approximately $3.50 per full-time student per semester. After an increased cost, putting the total at $6.2 million or approximately $6.50 per full-time student per semester, students voted again to support the project with a vote of 61 percent to 39 percent in April 1998.
Virlee said the expansion project should be finished by May 2003.
In other business, Kathy Poi, director of University Health Services, and Ferdinand Schlapper, UHS director of administrative services, presented UHS's $8,796,900 proposed budget to the committee.
""This year, knowing what was going on with the state budget, knowing what was going on with segregated fees, this was a year we thought we had to keep it as lean and mean as possible,"" Poi said. ""There's nothing here to cut.""
Poi also commented on current discussions of what services UHS officials would like to add with the necessary funding and facilities. She cited dentistry and optometry services as two conceivable additions.
""We are having these discussions but they're more projected to when we have a new area,"" she said.
SSFC members will decide on UHS's proposed budget at their next meeting.
Andrew Bryan, a SSFC member, said he would propose an amendment to the budget to provide a small amount of funding for the organization and implementation of the UHS-affiliated Student Health Insurance Plan. Currently, SHIP is self-funded. The insurance company that backs the program lost over $1 million last year just on UW-Madison due to low enrollment and a high-risk applicant pool.
Members of the Associated Students of Madison and UHS officials voiced support for an automatic enrollment program for SHIP, in which all students would be enrolled until they checked an opt-out box on their tuition bill, or noted in some other way that they did not want the plan.
