Correction Appended: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Jim Brusstar's title. He is MSA's Student General Counsel and an Engineering representative.

Michigan Student Assembly President Abhishek Mahanti continued to apologize last night for a failed new MSA website that cost $9,244.60.

At the assembly's meeting yesterday, Mahanti said though an attempt to fix MSA’s old website cost more than $9,000, the cost of the project was originally estimated to be $3,000 to $4,000.

“This was not a line item budget,” Mahanti said at the meeting. “We did not have a hard limit set.”

In an interview after the meeting, Mahanti said he was sorry the project ended up being so expensive.

“I apologize for the expenditure,” he said in the interview. “I’ve taken responsibility for it and hope we can move on.”

At the meeting, Mahanti told representatives that it was a mistake for him not to inquire further about how much money was being spent on the website or the number of hours that were put into its development. The money for the website, he said, was taken out of the assembly’s 2009 fall payroll budget.

“The time sheets were not available to me,” Mahanti said at the meeting. “It was a question away, and I neglected to ask the question and find out how much I was spending.”

MSA’s current website was created free of charge by an MSA Engineering Rep. Kyle Summers. The old website was thrown away because it would have cost MSA more money to fix it than to start over.

In the last week, University students have criticized the Michigan Vision Party in connection with Mahanti’s mismanagement of the website. Mahanti ran for president on the MVP slate, though he has since disaffiliated himself with the party.

At last night’s meeting, Mahanti said he is not tied to MVP and that his actions are not representative of the party members as a whole.

Jim Brusstar, MSA's student general counsel and an Engineering representative, has taken over the project and will seek input from other MSA representatives, specifically Summers, who Brusstar said has “technical expertise.”

Representatives will work on revamping the website free of charge — since no MSA representative can be paid for labor that is for the assembly.

Randy Yao, a computer science engineer and a former designer of the website, said in an interview after the meeting that he put in the most hours out of the three students who spent time developing the website. According to a payroll expense form, Yao received $2,933 for working on the website for 209.5 hours.

“We weren’t really aware of what the budget was at the time,” Yao said. “We lost track of the money that was spent.”

Yao added that the situation should be blamed on the miscommunication between the parties involved.

“I think it was a communication break down between (the other designers) and Abhishek (Mahanti),” he said. “The blame does not fall on any one individual. It really kind of falls on the communication over the big picture.”

He added that he thinks it is unfortunate the issue wasn’t resolved until it was “too late.”

Yao said the whole project was supposed to cut costs by adding a feature on the website where the MSA representatives could revise the site if there were mistakes or announcements to be added.

Architecture graduate student Andrew McIntyre, another designer that was involved with website development through a work-study program, said the project was too extensive for his experience in website design.

McIntyre said he asked Mahanti to hire two more designers to help develop the website, as a result of his inexperience.

“(The website) needed more than I could give,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre received $543.60 for spending 43.3 hours working on the website, according to the payroll expense sheet.