Budget committees offer more for college buildings

CARSON CITY -- Officials of the state's universities and community colleges -- who groused last week after a legislative subcommittee approved an operating budget not to their liking -- received a gift from a Senate-Assembly joint budget committee Tuesday in a state building program loaded with projects for the campuses.

"This moves us a long way in what has been a tough session," Chancellor Richard Jarvis said. "I think the Legislature has made a big effort to meet as many of our needs as they can."

Jarvis had complained last week that the operating budget approved for the University and Community College System of Nevada would threaten the quality of education.

The $230 million state construction program for the coming two years includes nearly $57 million for projects at UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada.

It also includes, for the first time, $16 million in bonds to help build new schools in local school districts that have decaying school buildings and no way to raise enough money for repairs or new construction. The measure was targeted at rural districts with declining property tax bases.

Not included in the building program was $9.5 million in cash the state gained from refinancing some of its outstanding bonds. Guinn intends to spend $3.5 million for a high-tech community college educational center in Pahrump; $700,000 for modular buildings for an elementary school in Pioche to replace a condemned building; and $2 million to pay off building debt for the White Pine School District.

The largest single project in the program, however, was a 1,000 bed, $45 million addition to the Cold Creek state prison in Southern Nevada. The first phase is under construction. The second phase goes on a fast track and will open in the summer of 2000, at the same time the first phase is ready.

Of the $57 million that will go to Southern Nevada's university and college campuses, the budget committee approved the following projects:

-- $9.4 million for furnishing and equipping the Lied Library at UNLV.

--$16.2 million to remodel Dickenson Library at UNLV to house the new law school.

--$27.2 million for a science building at the West Charleston Campus of the Community College of Southern Nevada.

-- $6.6 million community college high-tech center in Green Valley.

--$2.5 million science building for the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas.

--$600,000 for planning the renovation of Wright Hall on the UNLV campus.

--$2.9 million for campus improvements at UNLV.

--$1 million for campus improvements at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

The building program does not include $500,000 going through the Legislature in another bill to study whether a state college in Henderson is feasible.

Another bill working its way through the legislative process would authorize the university system to issue bonds to build a $30 million dental school at the UNLV campus. The school would be supported by Medicaid, Nevada Check-Up funds and through other contracts with health insurers, according to its sponsor Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas.

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