The changes would ensure that the Grant Fund, which provides money to student groups, receives at least 67 percent of the yearly budget, and that the Operations Fund—strictly for council expenses—receives no more than 5 percent of the yearly budget.
The new legislation, which must sit with the council for one week before it can be voted upon, also calls for a permanent reserve account starting at $5,000.
Mahan said that the situation the council found itself in last spring, when 93 checks bounced, was not due to over-spending or over-budgeting, but rather to a transfer problem between the council’s $330,000 account with the University and its Fleet bank account, which currently contains $120,000.
“We would make this [$5,000] extra-budgetary, so it would sit in this account forever,” Mahan said. “We will not bounce checks this year.”
—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.