State college’s fund-raising a failure

Thursday, June 3, 2004 | 11:31 a.m.

Despite Nevada State College advocates' promises that the new school would raise $10 million to construct its first building, the university system's interim chancellor and the college's lame duck president plan to ask taxpayers to foot the bill.

Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers and Nevada State College President Kerry Romesburg said Wednesday that they want regents to ask the state Legislature to "step up" and pay to build the college's liberal arts building in Henderson.

State lawmakers in 2001 committed to providing $13 million of the $23 million needed, but only if college officials were able to raise the remaining $10 million through donations.

At that time, many civic leaders, including founding President Richard Moore, promised regents and lawmakers that there was up to $50 million available from the community and said there would be no problem raising the $10 million by the June 2005 deadline.

Three years later the college has raised only $1 million.

With Romesburg leaving Nevada to accept the presidency of Jacksonville University in Florida and with most of the college's fund-raising leads tapped out, neither Rogers nor Romesburg has much hope of the college raising the additional $9 million in time.

In fact, neither has much hope of the college raising the money at all if the state does not show more support for the college.

"You cannot raise seed money for a start-up college," Rogers said. "What you have to do is the state has to make a first move and make enough of an investment so people who put up private money know that the school is going to be there."

Getting the state to appropriate the remaining $9 million may prove as challenging as raising the money privately.

Rogers must first convince the Board of Regents on Friday to add the building to the system's capital priorities list when regents already know that only half of the current list has a chance of being funded by the state.

He would then have to convince state lawmakers that it is worth investing more money in the college when more than a few lawmakers have long been skeptical about whether the college is even necessary.

If Rogers and Romesburg don't find a way to open the building by fall 2006, it could set the college back and cause a negative effect throughout the state's higher education system, the two said.

"This institution is certainly going to need that building or we will have more students than we can possibly house in our current facilities," Romesburg said. "It wouldn't affect the survival of the institution, but what it would affect in a very dramatic way is the experience that students would have."

Both Rogers and Romesburg fear that without the building the lack of space would severely restrict student access to higher education, by either pushing more students into the already crowded University of Nevada, Las Vegas or out of the system entirely. Those who are able to attend Nevada State College will be going to class in locations all over the Las Vegas Valley, wherever the college can "beg, borrow or steal" classroom space, Romesburg said.

The lack of access would, in turn, affect the college's mission of providing a more cost-effective college alternative for students and for producing more teachers and nurses, advocates for the college said.

"We need the state college," Regent Mark Alden said. "Without it we fail the access issue miserably. Without the state college, we basically end higher education's mission in Nevada. The state college should be the highest priority on both the regent's list and the capital list."

Other regents agreed that the building is essential to both Nevada State College and the mission of higher education, but many also said they were concerned that asking the state to fund the building would mean giving up on the promise college officials made to both the regents and lawmakers.

"I don't know if that is fair, whether we can ask for that," Regent Tom Kirkpatrick said. "The state needs to hold people accountable (to their promises), but you can't escape the fact that if the college is going to exist it is going to need a building. It's going to need more than one building, and the question is how much should be from donors and how much from the state."

Kirkpatrick did not see any way of satisfying all the stakeholders.

"Either way we go, we're wrong," he said.

Some regents worried that asking the state to fund the building at this time would damage relations between the system and lawmakers.

"I was under the impression that we made a deal with them," Regent Steve Sisolak said. "I don't want to do anything to get crossways with the Legislature and affect our other funding."

College officials believe they can get $3.5 million for the new building by delaying the purchase of the college's current building from the city of Henderson. The city leases the college the space for $1 a year.

But that still leaves $5.5 million for Rogers to squeeze out of the university system's 15-item $213.7 million priority list that is already about $100 million over the amount of funding regents can optimistically expect from the state.

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, one of the college's frequent critics, said he won't be the only lawmaker who will not appreciate being asked to bail out the college.

"I suspect that there would be a few who would have a problem with them only achieving about 10 percent of what they said they could achieve," he said.

Beers said the college's "fate is up in the air," as far as he is concerned and said the college "still hasn't been shown that economically we can make that viable."

Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, echoed Beers' concerns.

"They need to prove to me the need and that we are getting our money's worth," Cegavske, of Las Vegas, said. "They made a commitment. Richard Moore made a commitment to raise that amount of dollars and it hasn't happened.

"I don't think that the citizens should foot that bill. I think that should come from private donations."

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, one of the college's biggest supporters, said those promises were made in good faith, but that the ongoing criticism from the Legislature made it difficult for private donors to be confident that the college would survive. Much of the college's fund-raising efforts also had to be redirected to raise money for basic operational needs, Perkins said, as the state was forced to slash the college's budget to keep it alive.

Private donors did come up with several hundred thousand to keep the college running, Perkins said.

"I think it (the Legislature's actions) sent mixed messages to the private folks that normally would have donated to that college," Perkins said. "I think a lot of investors were looking at the project and saying 'I don't know if the state is really behind it.' "