A newly created student advisory board will give an independent panel of students authority over the $25-per-semester mandatory Recreation Center fee plus an additional $2.5 million administrators are planning to give to the center.

In 1985, a vote by the student body approved a referendum that allowed the sale of $15 million in bonds to pay for construction of the Rec Center. It was agreed that $5 million of the debt would come from gifts from outside entities, leaving students with a $10 million debt to be paid back through the mandatory fee, said Mike Remedi, Associated Students presidential adviser.

The Century II alumni fund-raising campaign pledged to raise the $5 million. Craig Stender, ASUA president at the time, gave the administration the go-ahead to continue the approval process without having collected the $5 million, Remedi said.

"Someone wasn't making it clear that the funding was not coming in as well as (everyone) thought," he said.

In 1991, the University of Arizona Foundation reported the Century II campaign had raised only $200,000, and in a meeting with Saundra Taylor, vice president for Student Affairs, last spring, the UA Foundation officially withdrew its support for the Rec Center, Remedi said.

"The Foundation's been absolutely no help to us," Remedi said. "(The Rec Center) was never a priority for them."

The university fronted approximately $2.5 million of the bond payments during the design and construction phases of the project. Now UA President Manuel Pacheco has agreed that the university will give the Rec Center the additional $2.5 million, Taylor said.

The new Student Recreation Center Advisory Board will decide how to spend the $1.71 million received through the Rec Center fee every year. While $1.37 million automatically goes to pay off the bond debt each year, the remainder can be used any way the board sees fit, Remedi said. The board will also have control of the $2.5 million when it is decided how it will be given to the Rec Center, Taylor said.

"The advisory board is another way to build in a formal process where students have a voice on how we maintain and expand the Rec Center," Taylor said.

She said the board brings the Rec Center in line with the student representation of other campus departments, such as the Student Union, which has its own advisory board, and Residence Life, which has a Residence Hall Association.

Previously, money collected through the mandatory fee was deposited into a general Department of Student Recreation account. After paying the yearly bond debt, the remaining funds were unaccounted for and may have been used for operational costs, Remedi said.

In the student referendum, which authorized the mandatory fee, there was an agreement that the funds would not be used for operations, such as payroll, utilities and maintenance, he said.

Taylor said the money collected will be used for equipment replacement, programming and expansion.

Taylor said Pacheco has been apprised of the funding shortfall and the administration is currently working with ASUA on a phased approach to compensate for it.

Grant Smith, director of Campus Recreations, said, "We've met with (Pacheco) and he has acknowledged a moral obligation to come up with the money."

Smith said he expects the $2.5 million to be "sitting out there" when the bond debt is paid off in 2011. However, he said he would like to borrow against the amount now to pay for future expansions to the Rec Center.

A six- to nine-month construction project is expected to begin on a 4,000-square-foot expansion of the center's weight room by the end of the summer, Smith said. Additional expansions are also expected to take place in the future, he said.

"Remedi and (ASUA President) Ben Driggs have taken the lead to say this is something we want to collaborate about," Taylor said. "The administration is trying to be responsive. It's not necessarily an easy solution, but it's one we feel committed to."

She said she did not know the details of the administration's expected contribution.

"Ultimately, the president has to approve a plan," she said. "It's likely we'll look at some kind of phased approach over five to 10 years."

Officials in the president's office said they did not know the status of the discussions.

The Student Recreation Center Advisory Board was created through a memorandum of understanding signed by Pacheco, Taylor, Driggs and Smith. The memo specifies that the funds from the $25 fee will be kept in a separate account and signatory authority of the money will rest with the advisory board. It states the money must be used for recreational needs only.

The students appointed to the board are Chairwoman Shawn Steinberg; RHA President Steve Parker; Jennifer Gerth, appointed by the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Association; Undergraduate Sen. Mindy McCollum; Steve Romero, university budget review committee chairman; Remedi; and a Rec Center employee yet to be named.