Ohio University trustees grilled administrators yesterday during the Resources Committee meeting, raising questions about the safety of the university’s infrastructure.
M. Marnette Perry, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, insisted that OU prioritize safety and find funding to fix problems when they arise.
“When it comes to safety, I reject anything that says, ‘We don’t have the money to fix (it),’” she said. “… Have we as trustees or as an administration prioritized correctly?”
Trustees also cited rising deferred maintenance costs at OU, now up to an estimated $480 million. Projects repairing infrastructure that has exceeded its working life are sometimes delayed if funding is not available.
“There are times when there is not immediately money available, so we take actions to protect the community until we can generate the fund to take care of it,” said Stephen Golding, vice president for Finance and Administration. “… We don’t ignore a safety problem, and we fix it as quickly as we can.”
OU is in line with other peer universities as far as deferred maintenance costs, but there is always room for improvement, Perry said.
Ohio’s higher education board hired Sightlines, a consulting group to analyze capital resource trends. OU does not have sufficient funding to stunt the growth of its deferred maintenance backlog, the group said.
Consultants recommended OU invest an additional $10 million per year to chip away at its deferred maintenance, but the state provides only $2 million per year for OU’s Athens campus’ “basic renovations,” according to the Board of Trustees agenda.
“There are safety issues, and that would be priority number one in terms of investment,” said Trustee C. Robert Kidder. “… For those to go unfixed would be unacceptable.”
Trustees also discussed possible increases to tuition, housing, dining and student fees for next year. Although the university will not make an official recommendation on potential fee increases until the Board of Trustees meeting in June, OU officials are discussing a 3.5 percent increase in tuition and fees and 1.5 percent increase in room and board or housing and dining.
These increases would amount to about $5.4 million for OU’s Athens campus, Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit said.
“This is not a proposal. It’s our preliminary thinking,” Benoit said.
Trustees must vote to approve any tuition and fee increases before they can go into effect. Last year, the board approved a 3.5 percent tuition increase, which cost in-state undergraduate students an extra $267 this year. The board also approved a 2.5 percent increase in housing and 2 percent increase in dining fees last year.
pe219007@ohiou.edu
@ThePostCampus
