Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403130118
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The legislature's version includes partial restoration of some budget cuts Wilder wanted for Tech.
The General Assembly also authorized the spending of approximately $40 million on new building projects on the Tech campus that will not be paid for with money from the state's General Fund.
The buildings will be financed instead with student fees and private funds. They include: two new dormitories costing $15 million, a $17.9 million student health and fitness center, a $5 million dining hall, a $1.5 million renovation of Lane Stadium and a $2.8 million renovation of Rector Field House.
The $4 million in additional General Fund money approved in Saturday's vote includes $1.2 million in start-up funds for a business-education center to be associated with the renovated Hotel Roanoke.
The Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement will be located in the conference center being built next to the Hotel Roanoke project.
"We will be able to get started at the center though not with the scope we had envisioned," said Ray Smoot, vice president for business affairs at Tech. Tech had asked for $3.4 million to start up the center.
"Given the strong competition for resources right now, I'm just pleased the state recognized the importance of the project," he said.
Smoot said Tech hoped to have programs at the center on line by the time the conference center is scheduled to open next spring. Most of the money approved by the legislature will go toward salaries of faculty at the center, he said.
The additional funding also includes partial restoration of money that Wilder wanted to cut from Tech's agricultural research and Cooperative Extension Service budgets and that of some other Tech programs.
Up until this year, Virginia's higher education budget has been cut every year since 1989. With a slight increase in higher-education funding this year, the trend now looks to be headed in the right direction, said Ralph Byers, Tech's director of governmental relations.
"If this is kind of the first robin of spring here, we're feeling pretty good," he said.
Tech is still concerned about the future of the agricultural experiment stations and the extension service, Byers said. Losses to their budgets cannot be made up from increases in tuition.
Tech had ask the General Assembly to restore $1.6 million to the agricultural experiment station budget and $2.5 million to the extension service budget. The university got $300,000 and $1.1 million respectively.
Bill Allen, acting director of extension at Tech, said it was too early to say what the effect of the $1.4 million unrestored portion of the extension budget will have on the agency.
"We're going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't impact jobs or programs," Allen said.
The extension budget has been cut 20 percent in the past five years, including the loss of 75 extension agents. Extension now has 740 employees overall.
Three research centers for coal, water and forest products that faced elimination in the Wilder budget also were reprieved by the legislature.
The Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research and the Commonwealth Center for Wood Science each received $200,000 and the Virginia Water Resources Research Center $150,000 from the conference committee. And a forestry research station at the Reynolds Homestead in Patrick County got $25,000.
The university's equine medical center in Northern Virginia received $400,000 that had not been included in Wilder's budget. The university had asked for $2.3 million.
The legislature provided $300,800 for a new program in commercial fish and shellfish technologies, about a fifth of what Tech had asked for.
The state budget also includes money to ensure that state colleges do not raise tuition more than 3 percent over the next two years. The portion of this sum earmarked for Tech is $3.3 million.
Approximately 36 percent of Tech's budget, which totals roughly $460 million annually, is supported by state tax funds. The remainder is financed with tuition and fees, gifts, grants, research contracts and other sources.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB