$ 3.1 Billion: What's At Stake
Posted on Sept. 14, 2000North Carolinians have heard much in recent weeks about the bond referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot to provide funds for the 16 UNC System campuses and the state’s 59 community colleges. Officially titled the Michael K. Hooker Higher Education Facilities Financing Act, this referendum is crucial to North Carolina’s future. Every vote makes a difference, and it is a difference not so much about buildings. What is at stake are the educational and economic opportunities available to our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, and each North Carolina child. (For campus-by-campus details, please visit www.ncfeo.net.)
A new U. S. Department of Education study projects that the number of North Carolina high school students graduating by 2010 will rise 26 percent, the fourth-largest increase expected among the 50 states. Many of these students will seek higher education at one of the UNC System campuses or community colleges. Some UNC System schools already are turning away qualified applicants because of inadequate classrooms, science and technology labs, and dormitories.
The significance of the bonds for our own campus cannot be overstated. Overdue repairs and renovations would be funded that not only would preserve irreplaceable collections of documents and artifacts but also provide 21st-century technology to classrooms and labs. We would be able to build a new Comprehensive Science Complex, a Bioinformatics Building, a Digital Multimedia Instructional Center and Music Library, a Medical Biomolecular Research Building, a Student Services Building (for advising, financial aid and registration) , a Community Health Building, a building to consolidate International Education Programs, and a Carolina Living an Learning Center for adults with autism.
Equally exciting are the renovations that the bonds would fund for many existing buildings. You know their names well-many reflect alumni, faculty and other leaders in Carolina’s history: Caldwell, Coker, Davie, Fetzer, Gerrard, Greenlaw, Hamilton, Hanes, Hill, Howell, Manning, Mitchell, Murphey, Peabody, Phillips, Saunders, Woollen, Beard, Berryhill, Brauer, Burnett-Womack, the House Undergraduate Library, Rosenau, Smith, Wilson, Carrington and Steele. Walking into these buildings each day are individuals who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Today many of these students use these below-grade facilities; throughout the next half century, we will rely on them to solve problems that affect us all.
The bonds also would renovate the most recognizable of our buildings — Memorial Hall — and some of our oldest — New West, built in 1859, and Alumni Building, begun in 1898 and constructed largely with funds from alumni (and distinct from the Alumni Center, built nearly 100 years later). Other existing UNC buildings that would be improved are the Health Sciences Library, the Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, the Medical Sciences Research Wing, and the schools of Public Health and Dentistry.
Importantly, the bonds also would fund general infrastructure, including the campus fiber optics network, campus energy management and control, cogeneration facility, electrical system improvements, physical plant support facilities, steam distribution system, storm drainage improvements, technology infrastructure expansion, and land acquisition.
The bonds — $3.1 billion overall with $499 million for our campus — would be issued over a six-year period beginning in 2001, and an independent oversight committee, recreated by the N.C. General Assembly, would monitor spending. State Treasurer Harlan Boyles ’51 affirms that North Carolina would not need to raise taxes to payoff the bonds, and he notes that “even with these bonds, North Carolina’s debt service will still rank quite low compared to other states.” He further observes that ” the bonds will significantly ease the property tax burden of county governments when it comes to upgrading community colleges.”
Fortunately, the construction of new facilities, the renovation of existing buildings, and the funding for added infrastructure would come just as the campus is nearing the completion of an exciting new campus master plan.
The bonds would allow for UNC’s dramatic growth in external funding for research to continue. Currently, our faculty are limited in attracting additional grants because we have too little laboratory and research space. This external funding would be a tremendous boost for the state’s economy.
While this fall UNC alumni may support different candidates for local, state and federal offices, let us join with alumni from North Carolina’s community colleges and from the other UNC System campuses and support this referendum. Together we can keep the doors of opportunity open. Let the educational partnership that began here in Chapel Hill in 1793 continue to flourish for all of North Carolina’s children. Please, vote “YES” for the Higher Education Bond Referendum on Nov. 7.
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
