2014 Finance Subcommittee

By admin, 30 March, 2022
Date of Meeting

    2014 Finance Subcommittee

    Date: Friday 8th week, Michaelmas 2014 (2014-12-05)

    Present: Dan Turner (President), Krista Halttunen (Vice-President (Administrative)), Georgina Wilson (Secretary), Max Dalton (Treasurer), Alex Mullan (Lindsay), Darryl Braier-Lorimer (Foody)

    Absent with apologies: Matthew Lynch (Foody)

    Agenda


    1. Pantry
    2. The Bar
    3. JCR Finances
    4. Battels for Finalists
    5. Pantry Staffing

    Minutes


    Krista began the meeting by welcoming the Finance Subcommittee-Elect, who were in attendance for the handover.

    Pantry

    Under Darryl and Matt, Pantry is expected to make a net loss of around £500 this year (compared to the £3,700 loss under the previous management). Costs haven’t changed much but takings have increased significantly. Freshers seem to be using Pantry extensively. 

    Finance Subcommittee expressed unhappiness with Pantry mushrooms.

    The Bar

    Alex hasn’t ordered any more stock yet. Takings have been down slightly in the last two weeks, but the bar’s likely to make a small profit this term (around £200) - mainly due to the late night opening (until 2am on election night), which made around £1000. There’s another late night opening on Friday post-Nepotists that Alex hopes will be similarly profitable.

    JCR Finances

    Max had no business to report.

    Battels for Finalists

    College are concerned that finalists will not pay battels after they leave University - this is why many JCR charges and levies are frontloaded to Hilary term. For obvious reasons, we can’t do this for viable for Pantry, and in recent years several people haven’t paid their bills (which results in College paying us the full amount and absorbing the loss).

    In Trinity, the JCR was told that JCR finalists would no longer be permitted to use battels in this way, unless the JCR were willing to take on the financial liability themselves. We agreed, and the total cost for that term came to £900 in unpaid debts.

    Possible approaches to this problem were discussed, such as simply absorbing the loss or introducing a pre-payment system for finalists.

    Dan remarked that the College Handbook explicitly forbids batteling finalists, but that in recent years College have been lax on enforcing this. He suspects that the stricter enforcement is due to a court ruling that the University cannot prevent people from graduating if they have unpaid debts.

    Max asked whether we felt the JCR would be better than the College at collecting debts from students. After discussion, it was deemed impractical since the College would be chasing the same debt separately and it would be legally difficult.

    Max and John resolved to discuss this separately.

    Pantry Staffing

    Darryl has been trying to hire someone to do the lunchtime shift and two weekend days once a fortnight. Unfortunately, it now seems that these aren’t the best hours for a new staff member and he needs to advertise for different times instead. 

    We discussed other staffing issues. 

    The meeting ended.