A contract ensuring Off Campus College Transport will receive a significant increase in funding from Binghamton University was agreed to in mid-December, tying up loose ends after a tax crisis nearly shut down the campus buses in the fall.

The University has agreed to pay $400,000 to fund OCCT for the year running from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009. According to Student Association Vice President for Finance Alice Liou, OCCT’s operating budget nears $1 million per year.

“The University helped us out a lot,” Liou, who was involved in the negotiations, said. “Now we’re trying to figure out what we can best do to prevent this from happening in the future.”

If mutually agreed upon by both sides, the contract can be renewed for four years after the initial expiration.

When the previous contract expired in 2005, a 1984 filing error that left OCCT’s not-for-profit status in jeopardy with the IRS was discovered. The tax error prevented the University from legally funding the buses for a year until the issue was resolved in October.

To keep the buses running as OCCT ran into debt in excess of $240,000, the Student Association kicked in extra money, a fact taken into consideration during the negotiations.

“The University is paying for bus expenditures this year, to make it even,” Liou said.

According to a statement issued Monday by JoAnn Navarro, associate vice president for administrative services and a University representative during the negotiations, the University is contributing more money because of “rising costs for the OCCT operation, such as fuel, repair costs, labor, bus replacements, etc.”

Navarro said the University has purchased three new buses at a cost of $415,000. They are scheduled to be delivered in the spring. The University is also paying more incidental costs to keep the buses running.

Matt Landau, who as Student Association president also serves as the chairman of OCCT’s Board of Directors, said the negotiations were all but completed by mid-November except for one matter: who would have final say in a situation of serious disagreement between OCCT and the University Transportation Committee, an advisory committee to the University appointed by the vice president for student affairs.

Previously, if a series of attempts to resolve the matter by negotiation failed, the VPSA had final say. The new contract stipulates that an independent arbiter must now be involved.

“My concern was that you could have the vice president for student affairs overrule the OCCT Board of Directors, which I thought was unfair,” Landau said.

According to Navarro, in the past the UCT and OCCT have always resolved any issues that have arisen.

“Dispute resolution has never been elevated to this level,” Navarro said.

Landau said the rest of the contract was sent to lawyers for approval on Nov. 19. The two sides began meeting in October.

An additional $141,244 for “all special shuttle-dedicated shuttle routes” is also included in the contract.

Navarro deferred comment to the SA on whether this would prevent future financial problems with the bus service.

“I don’t think this will ever be an issue again,” Landau said.