College wish list to reach $1.4 billion

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, March 6, 2002 | 9:26 a.m.

The university and community college wish list for funding in the next biennium is expected to reach $1.4 billion.

A list of funding requests for the 2003 Legislature was reviewed for the first time Tuesday during a Board of Regents finance committee meeting.

Costs to keep the state's eight higher education institutions running are estimated at $1.06 billion, not including funding for enrollment growth. That amount is slightly more than the $1.02 billion approved last biennium, said Dan Miles, the university system's vice chancellor of finance and administration.

State agencies have been instructed to submit budgets at the same annual level as 2002 fiscal year funding, not including enrollment growth.

"Things happen that make costs go up," Miles said. "Utilities were a big issue for us this year."

The Community College of Southern Nevada alone estimated its utility needs to be $775,000 over two years.

Capital improvement projects requested by the state's institutions are estimated at $329 million.

"We're not going to get it all, that's for sure," Miles said. "We sent out a list the same size about two years ago and we got about $100 million of it."

One request that made it onto the list was Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's pet project, a downtown academic medical center. The center, which is envisioned as a joint effort between the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno would be a teaching hospital that would draw top notch medical doctors to the state.

The project was slated for $58 million as an item that would be UNLV's responsibility.

"I was as shocked as you I'm sure Dr. (John) Lilley (UNR's president) to see $58 million next to the dollar amount owed by us on the academic medical center," UNLV President Carol Harter said.

Miles said the request was simply an effort to keep the item on the legislative list and keep it alive. UNLV would not be taking that project on alone if it does come to fruition.

Other items that made it onto Harter's list of capital expenditures were: $51.1 million for a science building, $6.8 million for a student services building and $8.7 million for the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs.

The urban affairs college, Harter said, jumped up the list of priorities because of a recent gift from the Greenspun family, which publishes the Las Vegas Sun, that would commit up to $12 million to build the structure.

Altogether UNLV's capital requests topped $134.6 million.

CCSN's requests were much less, at $36.1 million. The projects topping that list were a new health science building for $20 million, a $2 million library expansion project and a $6 million classroom in Mesquite.

The requests now will go back to the college presidents for refining before going to the Board of Regents in April for prioritizing, then to the governor for inclusion in the state budget.