State lawmakers cranky over both the universities’ $663 million repair list and the governor’s proposed turnpike toll-hike solution might feel differently if they, like some poor University of Kansas student last week, had raw sewage drip on them from the ceiling, a Salina Journal editorial rightly noted: But “lawmakers don’t have to worry because they spent tens of millions fixing up their digs in Topeka. No worry about a maintenance backlog in the Capitol.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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11 Comments
Oh Yeah! But that State Capitol improvement project was the workings of the good boy network in Topeka.
Maybe universities should concentrate on fixing the buildings where students study – before they fix sports stadiums.
Just a thought.
GS, valid point, far to often building maintaince is low on the list of things to do in any educational setting.It is not glamorous or exciting to see, those that end up paying for it see it as nothing more that the administration and teachers just wanting a fancier office or room. Here in Augusta the school board for over seventy years simply gave the headache to the next board coming in. Till the list of dangerous conditions I seen would take the entire page to list. No one wanted to face the hell storm of going to the tax payers to say a new building was needed. Meanwhile pieces of the buildings were falling off and behind the stage in the South building was like walking into the Rain forest building at the Sedgwick Co. Zoo when it rained. The front of one building was being held on by cables that were attached to the rear of the building and so forth.
We now have a new middle school, like everyone else until I worked there I had no idea just how bad a shape the buildings were in. I thought it was just a “give-me” that the school board would make sure the building my children were in were safe to be in.
A basketball coach gets close to half a million a year salary for coaching some game, and the universities are whining about not having enough money for “essentials”. Maybe the universities need to have a better look at their priorities?
raptor – in their defense I think that coach’s salary comes from ticket/alumni revenues. It is frustrating though.
Division 1 college athletics and the NCAA are BIG BUSINESS!! I’m not saying that’s good, by any means, but it’s a fact. Actually, in many ways, it’s sad. It seems to be a big price to pay to get a few young talented inner city kids a piece of paper who still can’t spell cat, if you spotted them the “C” and the “T”, but they can run a 4.2 40, or hit 7 out of 10 from the 3 point zone, blah, blah, blah. It once was about teamwork, camaradrie, and, most of all, fun! Now, it’s just the bucks, folks.
Talk about ill responsible education.All the resources and talents are meaningless without discipline.
The last address of regents buildings was in 1996. Not to mention the enormous budget they receive in addition to some of the highest tuition rates in the U.S. When was the last renovation of the capitol? These stupid legislators probably think they should do it every 100 years whether it needs it or not. Just somethig to think about. Oh, perhaps someone should ask Gov. Carlin about raw sewage coming in his office back when he was Speaker.
Why can’t they use the money they generate from ticket/alumni revenues to fix up the buildings? Why do they have to pay the coaches such a big wage? I would think the prestige of being a college basketball coach with a winning team would be a big enough reward.
Mary, raptor: as I have posted previously, the athletic programs at just about all Division I institutions are run by a separate corporation; at the University of Kansas, e.g., it is called the Kansas University Athletic Association (KUAA, for short). The ticket money, donations, etc. to that corporation are used for hiring coaches, funding athletic scholarships and the like. These funds do not find their way to the University’s general funds. In fact, the only employee of the university in the KUAA, IIRC, is the Athletic Director.
The great disconnect here is that folks see how much $$ is spent for coaches’ salaries, etc., and an assumption is made that there is a drain of resources from the university in general. That’s just not so.
Sure, I’d like to see more $$ raised from the alumni, et al, for the mundane tasks of maintenance and repair; just isn’t going to happen, to any large extent. Most folks with the dollars to donate are looking also for some fame, to put it politely. Their egos are served by naming a new building, the football field, whatever after them; they’re not going to be satisfied with the “Joe Smith Boiler Repair”, to give a bit of sarcastic example.
The problems relate to the failure to fully fund the Board of Regents’ budget requests over a great many years; when that happens, unfortunately routine maintenance is often deferred, in light of paying professors, renewing or adding periodicals to the library, and things of this nature.
(thinking out loud here…)I wonder how much money could be raised if all (or even the majority) alumni sent in a one time donation of $5.00 or $10.00 to be used for maintenance. If the state schools sent out a letter to all alumni asking for a small donation to be made – how much could be raised? (Maybe if a donation of $75 or more could be tax-deductible.) Any funds raised over the amount needed would be placed into an account that would be for the sole purpose of future maintenance.just a thought