Just wanted to pass along some thoughts about the UW North Sound hearing on Friday afternoon in the House Capital Budget Committee.
During the first couple weeks of session the debate on the new campus has been starkly different between the two legislative chambers. In the Senate, most of the disagreement seems to center on whether the new branch campus belongs in Everett, Marysville or Lake Stevens. In the House of Representatives, however, while there are similar divisions over the potential location, a much more serious discussion has surfaced which revolves around whether the state should develop a new UW branch campus at all.
In the preliminary academic plan the University submitted to the Governor and the Legislature last November, the estimated cost of the new campus was estimated to be between $600 and $800 million once the campus reached at optimum level of 5,000 students. The study further concluded that in order to insure that the new campus could provide a concentration of courses in science, technology and engineering, the institution should be built as rapidly as possible.
Obviously, such an ambitious capital investment for just one new campus could present some difficult challenges for a state capital budget which is struggling to pay for existing obligations while assuming new future financial requirements for K-12 capital construction. This has resulted in a lot of understandable uproar in the halls of the state capitol and caused a number of House members to wonder if the state can really afford a new UW branch campus in Snohomish County.
These were precisely the issues that Rep. Bill Fromhold (D-Vancouver) wanted to see discussed at last Friday’s work session on higher education capital and the projected costs of a new UW North Sound campus. Marilyn Cox from Planning and Budgeting and I were joined by Rep. Hans Dunshee (D-Snohomish) at the presenters table to talk about this issue and take questions from committee members.
From my vantage point, the work session went very well and served as an excellent example of how the legislative committee process can both educate and illuminate difficult fiscal policy issues. In our remarks, I think Marilyn and I provided the members with a clearer sense of the basis for our UW North Sound capital estimates and how different assumptions about how fast or perhaps how “incremental” the legislature chooses to grow the new campus can produce different cost estimates. We also tried to reinforce the point that rapid capital development can insure that the new campus can more quickly provide critical courses in science, technology and engineering. A slower or more incremental approach will delay the introduction of these more expensive course offerings.
The fate of the UW North Sound campus is still weeks away as the 2008 legislative session is far from over. I think Friday’s committee meeting provided those in attendance a better sense of the academic trade-offs involved in various approaches to the capital development of UW North Sound.