The multipurpose facility that Ohio University is building could cost up a quarter of a million dollars a year for maintenance and utilities.
The number was released from Richard Planisek, the director for facilities planning and space management, during the Mar. 14 Faculty Senate meeting.
“It includes all utilities and plus any custodial work we have to do in there,” he said. “Any daily cleaning, any of that kind of stuff, so it’s not just heating. It’s maintaining the structure on a day by day basis.”
With the recent budget cuts, faculty and staff aren’t happy to hear about the cost of maintaining such a building, said Joseph McLaughlin, faculty senate chair.
“My preference, although I am not a member of the committee and I suspect most faculty members would agree with this, that they not go forward with the project until they have a plan for how they are going to pay for this annual expense,” he said.
McLaughlin said the university and athletics’ budget have always been in conflict with the academic side of the university, giving an example dealing with the addition of Frank Solich, the football coach, a few years back.
“When President (Roderick) McDavis came here, we had a football coach who made about $150,000 a year, and then he quickly went out and hired Frank Solich, who makes $400,000 a year,” he said. “Well, that money wasn’t in athletics budget and over time, we had to shift money from student fees and other areas to them to cover the money that they had been asked to do.”
McLaughlin said he fears the students will end up paying for the facility out of their general fee and tuition, money that should be helping academics instead.
“It does not involve any money from tuition, and I personally do not think this is a
legitimate expense to pass onto the students in terms of a fee,” he said. “So whether that is going out and raising money for an endowment to pay for the operation, or I don’t know what, but I think that needs to happen.”
At this time, the university is not sure where the funding will come from to cover the cost of utilities and maintenance, said Katie Quaranta, media spokesperson for the university.
“This looks to me like a situation,” McLaughlin said. “We are setting up another situation in which either athletics is going to have to be given more money to operate their facility or it’s going to cost the university more to take care of the space.”
McLaughlin said he hopes that university will put a lot of thought into this multipurpose facility before they make any solid plans to move forward with it.
“To underscore what I already said, I hope they don’t stick a shovel in the ground until they have a plan to operate it and maintain it,” he said. “And I also hope that they don’t do that on the backs of students or take away from any academic activities on campus.”
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