USF SG Senate passes $21 million fiscal bills, awaits administrative approval 

Two fiscal bills for the 2026–27 academic year were presented and passed during a Tuesday Senate meeting. ORACLE PHOTO/DYLAN SABOL

USF Student Government Vice President Caio Esmeraldi presented two activity and service fee 2026–27 allocation bills to the Senate floor on Tuesday. 

At USF Tampa, A&S fees are collected from students via a $7 flat fee and a $12.08 per-credit-hour fee per semester, according to SG. 

SG chairs the university’s A&S fee allocation committee, which allocates that funding to 12 Student Success Departments and 460 student organizations at USF Tampa. 

Student Success Departments include the Recreation and Wellness Center, the Marshall Student Center and the Center for Student Involvement.

Within these departments, A&S fees help fund building hours, faculty and professional staff payroll, equipment fees and amenities.

Esmeraldi presented two A&S allocation bills for the 2026–27 year, which passed unanimously — one with overhead and one without.

Although they each total the same amount — $21,548,016 — Esmeraldi said the overhead bill allocates 9% of that money exclusively to the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President and the Office of the President. 

Ethan Walsh, the Tampa Lieutenant Governor and the Campus Allocation Funding Committee’s vice chair, said SG does not know specifically what the 9% is used for, but believes it is for “HR operations.”

The bill with no overhead means that 9% would be allocated to other areas, including Student Success Departments.

Both bills will be sent to USF President Moez Limayem for approval or denial. Esmeraldi said the university will “most likely” choose the bill with overhead.

Related: USF student orgs hit with budget cuts as funding shortfall deepens 

For the 2025–26 year, SG allocated just over $17 million to the Tampa campus. Esmeraldi’s 2026–27 overhead bill allocates roughly $15 million to the Tampa campus for the 2026-27 year. 

The overhead bill allocates $9.8 million to Student Success Departments on the Tampa campus, while the no-overhead bill allocates $10 million to these programs. 

USF Tampa’s 460 A&S-funded student organizations will receive a share of $921,208 under the overhead bill. This number decreases to $849,576 under the no-overhead bill.

Walsh said SG handled this year “a bit differently” than previous years — choosing to give student departments, organizations and SG operations percentages of the total allocation rather than specific budgets.

He added that USF Tampa’s student organizations were cut, on average, about 44% from their original allocation request for the 2026–27 year. 

“The amount they were able to request was limited, expecting an influx of requests and limited funds to distribute,” Walsh said.

Last academic year, student organizations faced 50% cuts to their original requests, while student departments faced 8% cuts to programming and 1% cuts to payroll to handle a $2.6 million shortfall.

Still, Walsh said there is a plan to help mitigate the hits student departments and organizations take from cuts.

“Luckily and unluckily, this year was kind of the biggest cut that we’ll probably have overall,” Walsh said. “Next year’s cut will be about the same, but we did kind of enact a new process for establishing a one-time usage fund.”

After creating a 2026–27 budget based on historical percentages and projections — which included these cuts — Walsh said SG gained a better perspective, resulting in an extra $360,000 to allocate.

Instead of allocating this money in the budget, Walsh said SG decided to set it aside as an emergency fund to cover one-time programming expenses or emergency necessities.

If unused, this money can be allocated to next year’s budget or used similarly, depending on campus needs, he said.

“If you put it into things that are recurring, so that’s like, pay, the minimum wage is going to increase, then we’re going to be in debt again,” Walsh said. “So then we just established the student enhancement fund that basically is utilized for one-time expenditures.”

Related: USF SG shares tips for submitting A&S budget requests as deadline nears 

USF’s annual A&S budget process starts in September and goes through a few levels — beginning with CAFC proposing its campus budgets for the next academic year.

Once these budgets are reviewed and approved, the university’s Activity and Service Recommendation Committee members consolidate them into the final budget, which is then sent to the Senate floor for approval or denial.

Arjun Manohar, the SG Senate President, said SG cut some of its own budget — roughly $1.3 million in operating expenses across all three campuses for the 2026–27 year — to help mitigate damage to student departments and organizations.

Despite these efforts, Manohar said A&S-funded programs across the board will still feel the budget cuts.

“I know there are cuts being made for the [student] organization annual budgets, which is always a hard thing to hear,” he said. “And I am worried about that, but I think we did the best that we were able to do.”

Manohar said that while SG senators work throughout the semester on various boards, policies and legislation, their biggest duty is to convene to analyze and approve the fiscal bill.

But this only happens once CAFC and ASRC form and approve the bill in their own committees.

Manohar said these committees are important to the A&S process because they provide a better perspective of campus needs and a stronger outlook on how funds are used.

“We reviewed this bill together, and we made our discussion points as needed, and we approved $21 million in allocations that will be used by thousands of students next year,” he said. “This is really the biggest impact that we, as senators, have.”