RALEIGH – Shiny new buildings are cool, but Gov. Roy Cooper apparently realizes we need to take care of what we have.
The governor’s budget recommendation for 2017-19 includes $351 million in bonds to pay for renovations to state buildings,1 half of them in the University of North Carolina System.
The needs are substantial – the University system has 84 million square feet of buildings,2 and the backlog of repair and renovation needs is more than $2.5 billion.
Western Carolina University alone has a steam plant built in the 1920s that heats 35 buildings3 on campus – the estimated cost to replace the boiler is $38 million.4
In their request to the 2017 General Assembly, the UNC Board of Governors cited estimates by the Association of Physical Plant Administrators (APPA) that buildings deteriorate at the rate of 2.5% a year – APPA recommends 1% of replacement value as a minimum annual reserve for repairs and renovations.
So the Board of Governors asked the General Assembly for 1% of replacement cost, or $128 million, for building maintenance in 2017-18. Yet the average appropriation by the legislature for University repairs and renovations over the past 10 years has been just $29.8 million.5
Gov. Cooper recommends the following projects at each of our public universities as a step toward addressing the backlog of deferred maintenance.
GOV. COOPER’S CAPITAL BUDGET RECOMMENDATIONS6
As part of a $351 million bond package for renovations of state buildings, Gov. Cooper proposes $175 million in projects at state universities:
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1 https://ncosbm.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/documents/files/BudgetBook_2017_web.pdf, p. 6.
2 http://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=55461&code=bog, p. 11.
3 http://www.wcu.edu/WebFiles/PDFs/WCU_2014CampusMasterPlan_ScreenRes.pdf, p. 112.
4 https://ncosbm.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/documents/files/BudgetBook_2017_web.pdf, p. 153.
5 http://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=55461&code=bog, p. 11.
6 https://ncosbm.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/documents/files/BudgetBook_2017_web.pdf, pp. 151-153.
7 https://ncosbm.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/documents/files/BudgetBook_2017_web.pdf, p. 149. The land purchase for the NCCU School of Business is a supplement to the 2016 Connect NC bond issue and is not included among the bond projects in the governor’s recommended capital budget.
Marjorie Livsey says
I graduated from a small private Georgia Junior College in 1956, although I grew up in N.C. Later, after many years I moved back to N.C. and finally finished my undergraduate and graduate degrees at ASU.
During these past years, my Junior college which is now a 4 year college, is adding an Agricultural School because of a large donation from an alumni farm family. This small Jr. College has completely changed the campus from very small to state of the art campus, which includes an olympic size pool, athletic buildings and modern dorms.They are presently upgrading their older buildings with help from alumni.
Even those of us who are retired and on fixed incomes can help in some way to make our N.C. University System again the best in the country.
Most of the support has come from alumni and their business or family connections. Many of these alumni are from N.C.
I believe Alumni could have give tremendous support for our University System if each of these 3 challenged their alumni, even if it means they compete against each other, to assist the State of N.C. in getting these renovations done.