Soto continues to ask for cheaper FlexPass

The ASPSU student senate tabled a resolution on Tuesday that would use a surplus from the student incidental fee to drastically reduce the TriMet FlexPass price for students, from $150 to about $60 per term.

The debate began when Rudy Soto, president of Associated Students of Portland State University broached the topic at a student senate meeting, asking senators to resubmit ASPSU’s budget back to the Student Fee Committee (SFC), with the surplus used to lower the cost of the FlexPass.

The FlexPass is a three-month, all-zone TriMet pass.

Soto said the surplus is an accumulation of money saved from budget cuts to student fee funded groups from the present and past years.

Soto had planned to pitch the idea to the SFC since initial budget deliberations last term, he said, but there was no way of knowing how much the surplus was going to be at that point because the SFC had not finished making cuts to other budgets.

“There’s $900,000-nine-tenths of a $1 million dollars-that’s just going to be sitting there,” Soto said. “So we’re asking you all to use that money toward the FlexPass.”

Soto had previously expressed interest to the SFC in February about using the surplus to reduce the cost of the FlexPass. SFC Chair Amanda Newberg said in February that bringing the surplus to the SFC after ASPSU’s budget had been decided on would be a violation of the fee committee’s policy.

The SFC will allocate over $12 million this year to student groups on campus, including ASPSU and the Vanguard. ASPSU’s budget was approved in February.

The FlexPass debate lasted an hour before it was tabled. Senators are expected to vote on the resolution at the next student senate meeting on Friday.