(09-28-2016 09:56 PM)HogDawg Wrote: (09-28-2016 09:47 PM)NorthTexan95 Wrote: (09-28-2016 09:39 PM)HogDawg Wrote: Quote:UNT is paying debt service for Apogee from its athletic budget, which cuts into the department’s funding. Kuehne and Sicuro recommended that UNT move the debt service costs to the university to free up funds. They also recommended UNT increase its equipment budget by 15 percent.
Ohhhh......now I get it. YOU spend the money, but get SOMEONE ELSE to pay for it? 
I *THINK* the issue is our AD office is paying for fees on the debt when if it transfers to the school then those fees are rolled into the overall debt and no extra fees. I think that's the thought process is a very basic words which is all that I can handle.
I didn't see any mention of saving on fees. It simply said they needed to create more room in UNT's athletic budget, and that two of those guys were recommending moving the debt service (a/k/a mortage payments) for Apogee Stadium to the main university budget instead of the athletic budget. The problem with this is, the athletic department will be "robbing from Peter to pay Paul", as the saying goes. They'll simply assign the debt service payments to some other poor bastards budget.
it is basically a way of fooling financial illiterates into thinking that money for stajium debt service can be pulled from thin air
all they are really saying is that the university needs to subsidize athletics more either at the expense of academics or at the expense of increased tuition and fees for students
this is not going to work out well if even one student that is opposed to athletics spending more wakes up and actually runs the numbers
what they are trying to do is take stajium debt service and wrap it into "overall building debt service" so they can then pretend that money is not being spent on athletics and perhaps it will not show up as a line item of athletics facilities spending
the reality is that money still has to come from somewhere and it will either be tuition or fees, but there are issues with attempting to do this and it could get ugly if they do it wrong (and they probably will)
here are the issues faced and how they play out poorly
1. no state funds can be used to pay for the athletics period and 50% of the stajium must be paid for with funds that are not generated from student fees or tuition....this is a state law
that means that 50% of the stajium can be paid with student fees or tuition dollars and the other 50% has to be paid for with ticket sales, events, donations or other monies generated by athletics
so at the end of the day there is only so much of that debt that can be transferred anywhere and it really does not matter where it is transferred to the LAW still says where the actually dollars need to come from
the student fee covers that 50% as reported by the past Chuckster Neinas report when the student fee was first passed, but that is about all it covers
that right there is the limit of what can be paid for by ANY university dollars no matter if those dollars are in a student fee, directly from tuition or pulled out of thin air
2. when the stajium was built and the student fee was passed at that time north Texas state had a student fee in place and $3 dollars of that went to athletics
when the specific athletics fee was passed that $3 dollars was removed from going to athletics and the athletics was funded with a dedicated $10 dollar athletics fee for a net gain of $7 dollars
that $10 dollar fee can by law only be raised one single time by 10% (one dollar) without a student vote being held allowing it to be raised more than that or raised again.....this is again by law and written into the legislation that was passed to allow the student fee
most north Texas state fans believe that the law allows the fee to be raised 10% at a time as many times as they want as often as they want until it gets to the state law max of $20 dollars that applies to all universities
this is in fact an incorrect interpretation of the law as told to me by the office of the person that wrote the law and pushed it through....they stated it could be raised 1 single time 10% and that is it without a student vote
it has now been raised that 10% so that fee is now $11 dollars
3. most students on campus if you ask them would believe that the entirety of the university's contributions to athletics consist of that money generated from that fee
it was never stated that the only university money handed off to athletics would be the money from that fee, but it is implied and was implied when the fee was passed by a student vote
currently the university sends about $9.3 million dollars to athletics outside of the student fee and the student fee sends about $10.7 million for a total of $20 million in student/university dollars going to athletics
there is not anything illegal about this, but I do not think that the VAST majority of students are aware of this and I think a very large number of them would not be happy about it if they knew the reality
and so the bigger reality is you have a university with a fiscal year 2015 (2014-15) athletics budget of $31.3 million and $20 million of that is already coming off the backs of students in the form of a fee that generates $10.7 million and then an additional $9.3 million in university funds that most students would be surprised to learn about
that university has no way to raise the actual athletics fee without a student vote on it and they have to cover 50% of the stajium debt service with money generated by the athletics department
so really if you want to try and play the shell game of moving debt around and pretending that the money for that came from thin air you what you would have to do is still shift some athletics generated money over the university and call that "for stajium debt service" and then you would have to shift university/student generated dollars back over to athletics and call that "for general athletics expenses".....and the end result of that is you actually make it look like MORE university dollars are being spent on athletics than actually are
and that is WITHOUT any increase in actual athletics dollars.....and outside of the athletics department generating more dollars the only place that MORE athletics dollars can come from is from the academic side which means more of a subsidy beyond the $9.3 million dollars that is spent on athletics plus the $10.7 from the dedicated student fee ($20 million total in student/academic side money)
so if you shifted the debt service to the academic side, then shifted athletics dollars over to the academic side to help cover the mandated 50% of that stajium debt service (lets say you shift $5 million in athletics dollars over there) and then you shift academic dollars back to athletics for "general athletics support" well then you have increased that $9.3 million (on paper) to $14.3 million even though you were playing a shell game with money....and then if you actually add say $5.7 million to the athletics budget in NEW MONEY coming from the academic side well now that academic side subsidy is $20 million dollars PLUS the student fee that generates $10.7 for a total on paper athletics subsidy of $30.7 million dollars......when most students think that the only academic side money going to athletics is the student fee and they already are ignorant of the $9.3 million in other dollars
and even if they looked at it all and figured out the shell game of moving the debt service it (the $5 million shifted from athletics for the legally mandated 50% athletics debt service in the stajium) well they would still see a university that is spending $25.7 million in student dollars on athletics with only $10.7 of that coming from the student fee that most believe is the only student money going to athletics
it would be a lot smarter to simply leave the debt right where it is in the athletics side and simply give athletics $5.7 in new academic side money and hope the students don't notice it like they do not notice the $9.3 now
and the bigger risk than that is right now with the financial management at north Texas state I am not sure most even would remember the law requiring the 50% debt service mandate from the athletics generated dollars (I would not be surprised if those that wrote this report were not aware of that which is why they proposed this shell game in the first place)
and if there comes a time when they either forget or are not aware that they need to shift some athletics dollars over to the academic side to cover that 50% portion of the debt service.....well someone could be in violation of the law....but of course when your university just had a $100 million dollar accounting fraud involving multiple issues I don't think you worry about things like that
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Consultants report critical of UNT - Any questions why our old AD had to go?
