After a 7 hour meeting, questions remain on where the Cab Crawler program stands

t was a war of words at Sunday's Student Senate meeting as the contentious debate surrounding the significantly over budget Cab Crawler program took center stage. The more than six-hour-long meeting, which lasted until 12:46 a.m., saw senators and President Tyrone Grandstrand, along with Treasurer Sterling Wiggins pitted against each other after allegations of mismanagement an unethical behavior were raised on numerous occasions.

The program, which is currently $8,884 over the $45,000 allocated budget, has seen a dramatic increase in ridership over the past academic year and as a result has cost Student Government more than originally expected.

But both the members of the previous Senate and the previous Executive team were well aware that the program would be under funded. In fact, Grandstrand made an announcement to the previous Student Senate in October advising them that some action needed to be taken in order to continue to fund the program - nothing was done.

The account went in the red in February and the deficit has continued to grow since then. In fact, if it wasn't for a $3,180 bailout by presidential reserves, the total amount of deficit would be just over $12,000. The April invoice has yet to be tallied or paid but Wiggins said that it could take up to $19,000 to cover the bill through May.

At 12:30 a.m. Monday morning, Senate Bill 09-10-01 was brought to a vote and after some discussion, the bill to allocated the $19,000 needed to fund the program was passed.

But the program is not out of the spotlight just yet. Senators decided to table a budget line item that included the Cab Crawler program until next week. This line item will likely see extensive debate and discussion as senators decide what to do with the program and how it should be funded.

The debate Senator Michael Rocks-MacQueen pointed out during the meeting that it was up to President Grandstrand to make decisions and negotiate contracts as per Student Government bylaws. Grandstrand contended that he made efforts to notify the previous Senate that changes needed to be made to the program in order to sustain it through the end of the year. The decision to cut funding from $55,000 to $45,000 for this fiscal year was made by presidential finance during the Fisher/Buhr administration more than a year ago, according to Grandstrand and was done in an effort to reduce overall costs for the university.

During Grandstrand's first administration, presidential finance upped the budget to $60,000 which will go into effect next school year.

As such, the program will have a significant increase in the budget; the $15,000 increase in budget over this year will give the program more flexibility but next week's meeting, the last for this semester, will surely bring heated debate as many senators have different opinions on how the program should be best run.

And, with the program currently thousands of dollars in debt and fingers being pointed in every direction, plans are in the works for developing a program restructure.

The future of Cab Crawler is largely in the hands of student senators as they decide on the possibility of major changes to the funding streams provided by both students and Student Government.

Currently, students pay $1 per passenger per ride and Student Government pays $4 from the aforementioned $45,000 budget allocation.

During a meeting between Student Government representatives and Andy Simmons, owner of Red White and Blue Taxi, the company that offers the service, several options were discussed including the possibility of UND withdrawing completely from the funding of the program.

Other options included students paying $2 and UND Student Government matching the amount, students paying $2.50 and UND paying $1, or students paying $3 and UND paying nothing. Also mentioned, was the idea of having differing payment amounts depending on number of passengers.

No matter the agreement reached by student Government and the taxi company, students will more than likely see higher taxi fares in the coming year.

How this all happened With the $19,000 needed to fund the program to the end of the year, the words "how" and "why" were raised several times during the meeting.

So how did we get to this point? The first issue was the $10,000 decrease decided upon during the Fisher/Buhr administration. This, complicated by a dramatic increase in ridership has driven up costs. The international students, especially those participating in the UND Aerospace's contract flight training program have accounted for a significant amount of the ridership increases according to both Rocks-MacQueen and Simmons.

The $19,000 will put a quick fix on this year's budget shortfalls, but much will need to be done in order to evaluate the success of the program in the future-for now, the finger pointing will have to be "tabled" until next Sunday's meeting.