Noah Hughes
The Broadside

The annual Salmon Bake, provided by the First Nation Student Union, faces some challenging financial troubles this year.
On April 25, representatives of the FNSU met with the Associated Students of Central Oregon Community College during ASCOCC’s meeting, to discuss options for meeting out all their budgeting concerns. This was the first item on ASCOCC’s agenda, occupying a significant portion of their time.
With the cost of all the other aspects of the event, the FNSU found it difficult to purchase the salmon with what was left in their budget, according to Cruz Mueller, who spoke on behalf of the FNSU.
“We’re running a pretty tight budget, and everyone, including the performers and the salmon chef are asking for more money,” said Mueller.
The cost for fish changes weekly, with the average somewhere around $40 per fish at Safeway, according to Mueller. ASCOCC suggested the FNSU approach Albertson’s for their fish, since the manager at Albertson’s was especially helpful in getting ASCOCC a good deal on turkeys for Thanksgiving, according to Taran Underdal, ASCOCC advisor.
The student government decided to postpone any decisions about granting more funds to the FNSU until they were able to assess the club’s overall budget and the cost of the fish is determined.
Once again, ASCOCC turned their attention to the Early Childhood Education conference, having already paid partially for up to 50 students to attend. Originally, they approved $25 per student, covering roughly a third of the cost. Only ten students had signed up for the event at the time of ASCOCC’s meeting, according to Michael Biermann, fiscal and operations coordinator.
“Lets go ahead and pay for these guys,” said Biermann.
“We originally approved $1200 total to cover the 50 students, we should be able to cover the ten that already signed up at $85 per student.”
A recent blood drive with the Red Cross turned in good results, according to Kelly Huskey, branch campus coordinator. With Bend and Redmond campus seeing the highest number of donations at 62 and 28 respectively, Madras came in third with eight and Prineville with six.
With the blood drive ending on the day of the meeting, Huskey requested $500 to cover the cost of lunches for all the volunteers. Part of that money would go to Huskey herself, to reimburse $228 she claimed she paid out of pocket.
Since there were not enough members of the council present to represent a quorum, they couldn’t vote on the decision since Huskey’s vote would reflect a conflict of interest.
“Its not about whether we want to approve that amount,” said Michael Biermann. “Kelly shouldn’t be spending that amount of money out of pocket.”

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