In an e-mail sent out to executive committee members, Student Union (SU) Vice President of Administration junior Jeff Nelson stated that he wanted to ensure that every Treasury member felt comfortable with the pace of progression and to that end, decided not to hold a vote at the meeting.

Nelson said that many of the executive committees do not understand the proposed plan.

“I think the biggest issue is a lack of understanding of what is actually being proposed,” Nelson said after the meeting.

Junior Dylan Suher, general manager of KWUR, an executive committee, was pleased to see SU take more time with the proposal.

“Student Union did the right thing to take time and really think about this,” he said. “Overall, there needs to be more, not just transparency, but collaboration on these type of things. Looking forward, that’s what we hope to see.”

One of the reasons for the postponement was that the proposal raised a wide range of issues that Treasury members wanted to address; some members discussed the pros and cons of charging students to rent equipment while others discussed the makeup of the Equipment Board.

In order to remedy that problem, SU Treasury Adviser Julie Thornton suggested making a concentrated effort to continue the discussion and work through the problems.

“One thing [that] I think is lacking is a true committee to do this. Let’s have a small group talk about this rather than just have Jeff do it or just have a couple people from Treasury work on it,” Thornton said.

According to Nelson, SU hopes to continue to move forward with the proposal throughout the next month or so.

“The plan is to continue to work over this over winter break and to get a small group of representatives from Senate, Treasury, Executive, the groups themselves and whoever wants to come to say, ‘What are the problems with this, and what are the solutions,’” he said.

Nelson said he hopes members will be able to come back in January ready to pass the proposal.

Treasury representatives expect passing the proposal to be a long process. The proposal contains statute changes that require a two-thirds majority vote by both the Senate and Treasury. The proposal also requires a constitutional amendment that would have to pass through both bodies before it comes to the entire SU body in a referendum vote.

SU is hoping this issue will be on the March ballot during the same time as elections for SU representatives and executives. This would allow time for a transition period before the next budget process.

In order for this to happen, SU must approve the proposal by mid-February.

“A lot’s got to happen in a short period of time,” Thornton said.

But even Suher, who has criticized the proposal, believed that the timeline is possible to maintain.

“I think it was clear that we weren’t way far apart and that there was middle ground that can be achieved,” he said. “I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be on the ballot and approved in March.”