Systemwide prioritization is by legislative mandate
The UNC system's Board of Governors is dramatically changing the way it puts together funding requests for construction projects.
Responding to a mandate from the General Assembly, the board is designing a method to allow prioritization of construction projects across the entire UNC system. The new method will be used in establishing the Board of Governors' 1997-99 budget request, a General Administration official said.
Until now, the board has submitted budget proposals that included lists of construction projects--including new buildings and repair and renovation of existing ones--for each individual campus. While the projects for each campus were listed in order of priority, there was no attempt to compare the importance of projects on one campus with those on other campuses.
Consultant Eva Klein presented a draft to the Board of Governors at a work session last week. She emphasized the document was still in the draft stage. Copies were being sent to the campuses for comments that are due back by March 29. After a plan is put into effect, it will need further adjustments as General Administration and the campuses gain more experience with the system, Klein said.
Among the draft plan's key features:
*Capital projects would not be listed by campus but by type, as defined under broad "program priority categories," such as core support facilities or research. During each two-year budget cycle, these categories would be ranked by the Board of Governors to reflect current priorities, and projects from individual campuses would be ranked within each category.
*Space standards would be established in an effort to quantify which campuses have shortages in areas such as classroom and office space.
*A long-range systemwide capital plan would be developed that included all projects expected to be needed during a period of six-to-eight years or longer.
*Planning for construction projects would be tied more closely to academic planning. Requests for new academic programs should include descriptions of expected space requirements.
*The capital budget request should be simplified to include only two line items--(1) repairs and renovations and (2) major capital improvements such as new buildings or land purchases. The board's capital budget requests now have five line items: repairs and renovations, projects to improve access for the disabled, N.C. Public Television projects, land acquisition and capital improvements.
No Ten Commandments
Klein said interviews with legislators showed that they expected more information about the relative importance of individual projects. Further, legislators--and campus officials--said they wanted clearer policies and objective standards by which the merits of projects would be weighed, she said.
"The sentiment is that there ought to be an even better way to do things than they are done at present,'" Klein said.
While satisfied with the degree to which all campuses have been included in past capital budget requests, lawmakers said they expected UNC administrators could use objective standards for addressing measurable needs such as enrollment growth and renovation, Klein said.
"A plan needs to be three things: credible, easy to understand and have some measurable component to it," she said.
While objective data should be used to help rank projects, Klein said she would not recommend establishing a strict numerical formula such as ones used in South Carolina and Wisconsin.
She said she considered those states' experiences with numerical ranking systems to be unsatisfactory. Also, members of the General Assembly told her they wanted to retain flexibility to make judgments, she said.
"One interviewee told us: `Whatever you do, don't give us the Ten Commandments. Give us more information, but don't make it look like it's carved in stone,'" Klein said.
Using the system
Klein, who helped design the system used by the UNC system to prioritize repair and renovation projects, said she felt campus officials were prepared to use a more objective system for drawing up capital budgets.
She suggested that the campuses submit their capital project needs before the board decided how to rank its program priority categories. That way, Klein said, the campuses would not load up on projects that fell into the board's top-ranked categories.
General Administration then might invite representatives of the campuses to join a task force that worked on ranking the program priority categories, Klein said.
Setting standards
The board should establish minimum standards for categories of campus space, such as classrooms, offices and libraries, Klein said. Once a campus achieves the minimum standard, that campus may continue to request more funding for a project within that category, Klein said, but the project might be a lower priority than helping other campuses achieve the standard.
"When a faculty office building project comes through from an institution with a massive shortfall, then it's clear it's a project that should be funded," Klein said. "When one comes from an institution with a surplus, then you have to send your staff out there to ask some questions."
Klein's draft report included data on classroom and office space that showed East Carolina's Health Affairs led the system with 986 square feet of office space per full-time equivalent faculty member. Chapel Hill's divisions of Health Affairs and Academic Affairs were next with 761 and 748 square feet, respectively.
Across the UNC system there was about 570 square feet of office space per faculty member, according to the report's data.
Klein said the board may want to include an adjustment in the formula for the system's doctoral/research institutions.
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