Students should push Gov. Brown to prioritize funding UC maintenance
By Natalie Delgadillo
Oct. 2, 2014 2:05 a.m.
Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly refused the University of California state funds throughout this year, despite a surplus and a declining financial situation at all ten campuses across the state.
But students have remained strangely silent about Brown’s minimal support for higher education. Generally, students push for better financial aid and lower tuition. But when it comes to criticizing the state when it commits specific affronts to our funding, students let the occasion pass without complaint.
Last week, Brown declined the University of California’s request for $50 million to help pay for mounting maintenance costs.
Given the opportunity to work with the University on one of the biggest cost drivers for the UC, Brown failed once more to show that he is willing to contribute his share to the University’s mounting costs.
It’s the state’s responsibility to fund the UC, and as such the budget must cover deferred maintenance costs, which involve building repairs and upkeep that have been put off because of monetary restraints.
And now that the state has continuously refused to cover those costs, students at the UC should take up the cause.
Students should be speaking out about neglected maintenance costs, because they go beyond having a state-supported quality education. Keeping up with repairs is paramount to the safety of hundreds of thousands of young Californians across the state.
The problem of deferred maintenance is a serious and growing concern at the UC. UCLA alone currently needs $770 million in deferred maintenance costs. The $50 million Brown offered the entire UC was nothing more than a drop in the bucket for the University’s overall needs.
Yet still, Brown has not budged, adding insult to the injury of our growing costs and aging buildings that will actually need repairs if maintenance cannot be funded effectively.
Brown said in a letter to the State Assembly that he could not justify the extra financial support for the University with so many other pressing financial concerns, like the serious wildfires throughout the state.
Shirking the long term maintenance issues entirely will lead to serious problems that will be more expensive to fix in the long run. It also ignores the state’s important role in public education funding.
Furthermore, the state has a rainy-day fund that should be used to fund unexpected costs like a more destructive wildfire season than expected. Known costs like funding public education should not be ignored to support emergencies that should lean on the rainy-day fund.
UC President Janet Napolitano said in an interview with student media on Tuesday that Brown’s decision felt like “Lucy yanking away the football” from Charlie Brown – an apt analogy. Though Brown has teased the University with the possibility of more financial support and failed to follow through, the conversation cannot end here.
If re-elected in November, Brown must look at UC finances with longevity in mind. The UC system can no longer tolerate halfhearted offers that never pull through.
And if Brown refuses to recognize the deep and crippling need that deferred maintenance and decreased state funding has caused for the UC, students need to take the conversation to him and force him to take note.
