Free issues of The New York Times will be available on campus again starting Tuesday, but the program still faces the possibility of huge cuts next year.
When delivery resumes Tuesday, fewer copies of the Times and USA Today will be available due to rising subscription rates, according to Student Body Treasurer Maryam Laguna.
Instead of an average of 386 copies, there will be closer to 300 copies of each paper available on campus every day, she said.
The free papers are part of a $60,000-a-year program run by Student Government, paid for by student fees.
If demand for the papers is high enough, it's possible to request more copies later in the semester, Laguna said.
"Yes, on [Tuesday] there might be only 300 papers delivered," she said. "That doesn't mean we can't request 350 papers per day."
The temporary delay in the delivery of the Times this semester was the result of negotiations over the terms of the new agreement that took into account a hike in rates.
Next year may be an entirely different story, as the current version of the SG budget would cut the amount dedicated for the program from $60,000 to about $30,000.
The proposed cut is due to a variety of factors, Laguna said, one of which is a major increase in overhead costs, the result of a recent change in the way UF bills its units for overhead.
Overhead costs, like the use of UF's payroll system, would increase from $50,000 to just over $400,000 under the proposed SG budget, which hasn't been passed yet.
Under the current plan, half of the increase would be taken from SG reserves for the first year, Laguna said.
The first vote on the 2010-2011 budget is Tuesday, she said, and things could change before the final budget is passed.
Laguna said no decisions have been made about how the newspaper program would change under the proposed budget, but she is hoping to find funding for the program before it is cut in half. Asked if one paper would be more likely to be cut than the other based on popularity, she said the numbers indicate that both papers are equally as popular.
"There's two different papers for two different types of people," she said.
