The Associated Students Finance Committee will recommend that the Senate allocate $1 million to athletics in the 2007-08 budget, Director of Finance Adam Haverstock said.

The decision was made at the committee’s meeting on Monday, and the recommendation will go before the Senate in late April, though that could change.

The amount is a significant drop from last year’s recommendation, and subsequent allocation, of $1,471,535.

Finance committee member David Gonzalez, who represents the College of Engineering and Computer Science, made the motion to recommend $1 million.

Gonzalez said after the meeting that he came to that amount when “trying to reach a balance” in what the rest of the committee was discussing.

“We were looking at previous years and how the funding trends have gone, and they have decreased over the years,” Gonzalez said.

Four representatives were in favor of the recommended amount, while two opposed and one abstained from the vote after about 10 minutes of discussion, Haverstock said.

Finance committee member Lyla Askejian, who represents the College of Business and Economics, was not in favor of the $1 million recommendation and said she would have preferred a recommendation of $1.5 million.

“If they’re used to having $1.4 million and it’s going to go to $1 million, it’s going to be a big deal in my opinion,” Askejian said. “If it affects scholarships, that’s going to be a shame.”

Haverstock said that General Manager David Crandall was unable to attend the meeting due to his attendance at a conference.

Crandall tele-conferenced in, however, giving the committee his background knowledge of the relationship between the budget and athletics since 1995.

Haverstock said that after football was cut from the program in 1999, A.S. has consistently allocated less money to the program.

President Adam Salgado said he would prefer that the decrease occur gradually.

“I’m going to take a look and see what they take away from athletics,” Salgado said. “I think athletics is an important part of school spirit.

“One of the important things that me and (Vice President Sarah Jackson) want to focus on is athletics,” he added. “I think it would be irresponsible of us to take a huge chunk of money away from them without giving the athletes time” to find alternate funding.

Salgado’s goal for athletic funding is consistent with his and Jackson’s focus on school spirit with events such as Red Rallies for games.

Much of the money would likely go to scholarships.

Budget deliberations will be finished soon within the committee, Haverstock said.

At that point, the budget is given to Salgado, who has 10 days to suggest changes to the document. The budget is then returned to the finance committee, which can incorporate or disregard Salgado’s suggestions.

Finally, the budget is forwarded to the Senate, which must discuss the budget for a minimum of two meetings.