9-2-25: Business Office Reminders

TO:       John Jay College Community
FROM:  Finance and Business Services
DATE:   September 2, 2025
RE:        Business Office Reminders

As we return from the Labor Day Holiday, the Department of Finance and Business Services would like to remind the College Community on the following:

  1. University’s Procurement Policies and Guidelines issued by Mark Flower, Vice President and COO, Finance and Administration. The guidelines can be found here: 

  2. The “Dos and Don’ts” for successful Procurement. The link can be found here.
  3. Notify Michella Danner, Associate Director, Procurement at mdanner@jjay.cuny.edu as soon as feasible for CUNYBuy access for:
    1. Changes in department roles for Creators or Approvers
    2. Employee transfers to new departments
    3. New department hires
  4. Currently, Morton Williams and Justino’s are providing services to the College until a new Request for Food Services Proposal is issued. All departments are required to submit a Catering Request Form with a copy of the quote to the Business Office for approval. The vendors will not honor food service requests without approval from the Business Office.

Note the following:

  1. Academic departments require pre-approval from Kinya Chandler, Associate Provost.
  2. Anna Macris, Administrative Coordinator, amacris@jjay.cuny.edu, will coordinate food purchases from Justino’s only.
  3. The department will be required to coordinate with Morton Williams on delivery, etc. You can contact Eduardo Abreu at Edward_er@hotmail.com to make arrangements.
  4. The Student Activities Financial Office will coordinate food purchases for the Association and Children’s Center.
  5. On-site social events, such as office parties, birthdays/showers, retirements, funerals, graduations, student or employee recognition events, dinner or any reception type functions are not allowable tax levy costs, and hence cannot be paid with tax-levy funds.
  6. Alcoholic beverages or related costs cannot be reimbursed from tax-levy funds.
  7. Offsite staff meetings, i.e., meals solely for CUNY employees taken offsite, while not in Travel status, cannot be paid from tax levy funds under any circumstance.
  8. For faculty and staff who have not received new RFID tags or presented their laptops and/ or sensitive equipment, and departments that have not completed inventory tagging, please coordinate with Louis A. Perillo, Associate Director, Property Management at loperillo@jjay.cuny.edu as soon as feasible. Without your support and assistance, we would have not achieved the University’s threshold deadline on August 29, 2025. We met the deadline, but we are not quite done.
  9. A Training Refresher will be announced during the semester on CUNYfirst/ CUNYBuy.

For questions and concerns, you can contact the Finance and Business Services Department’s Team leads as follow:

Thank you.

Helen Cedeno, Assistant Vice President for Finance
Copy: Mark Flower, VP and COO, Finance and Administration