With its fiscal situation in clearer shape, Penn State has eased off a slowdown on new construction and other select capital projects, university President Graham Spanier told the Faculty Senate on Tuesday.
At the same gathering, Provost Rodney Erickson said the administration plans to propose pay increases for employees that would take effect in the 2012-13 academic year. Much of the university workforce is now laboring under a pay freeze — its second in three years.
On the facilities matter, Spanier said critics will tweak the improvements and suggest that the capital monies could be better spent elsewhere. But ‘the moment we stop (our capital focus) is really the moment we’re declaring that we’re allowing the quality of the institution to erode, he said.
‘And I do not want to do that,’ Spanier went on. ‘So, yes, we are going to invest in our facilities’ for the future.
He also underscored that ‘we’re building this university for the long run. We’re building this university to look ahead for decades.’
Back in March, Penn State trustees agreed to slow progress on eight significant capital projects across the university system. At that point, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett had proposed a 52 percent state-funding cut for Penn State — a reduction that would have shaved $182 million from the university’s revenue for 2011-12.
Penn State needed to ‘take a deep breath’ and ‘figure out what all of this means,’ university Treasurer Al Horvath said at the time.
By July, though, the state Legislature had negotiated a final state-funding cut of nearly 20 percent for 2011-12. Corbett signed off on it.
And so, with finances on more solid footing, the university lifted its capital-project slowdown later in July, Penn State spokesman Geoff Rushton said.
Of the eight projects systemwide that had been paused, he said, only one — at the Altoona campus — is still on hold.
At the University Park campus, the once-paused capital projects now advancing to construction include some Pattee Library improvements, a West Campus chiller-plant expansion and an East Campus steam-line extension, Rushton said.
He said a planned expansion of the HUB-Robeson Center and renovations planned for the Cedar Building and South Halls — all formerly frozen, too — will now proceed to design-approval phases, then to construction.
‘I’m not talking about billions of dollars’ in projects, Spanier told the Faculty Senate. But he said the university will press forward on capital advancements where it can.
And increasingly, Spanier said, those advancements will center on the renovation of existing facilities and infrastructure improvements rather than all-new construction.
‘It’s important to keep in mind that we have a huge backlog of deferred maintenance’ and a lot of ‘very, very old’ facilities, he said.
On the pay-raise front, Erickson said the university’s next budget proposal — for 2012-13 — must include pay increases for faculty and staff members. (The budget is ultimately approved by the university trustees.)
Erickson also said the university also will request a ‘modest’ appropriation increase from the state and look toward additional, targeted expense cuts as it plans for next year. Earlier this summer, Penn State reported that its internal cost-cutting and efficiency-building efforts were achieving tens of millions of dollars in new savings.
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