Daily Lobo new mexico
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March 20, 2012
tuesday The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
UNM mulls $1.5m offer to keep North Golf Course by Luke Holmen holmen@unm.edu
UNM’s North Golf Course will remain a golf course for another 25 years if the regents accept a $1.5 million offer from the county commissioner. The Bernalillo County Commission unanimously voted on March 13 to offer UNM the money to not develop over the course. In 2007, UNM President David Schmidly suggested building a retirement community on the land as a way to pay off bonds issued by UNM. Negotiations are now in progress between the County Commission and the Board of Regents. Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins proposed the $1.5 million 25-year easement. She said the funding would go to repair the North Course’s aging irrigation system. She said improvements to the irrigation system would save UNM about 30 million gallons of water each year. “The course is a vital part of the community and it’s one of the last large undeveloped areas in central Albuquerque,” she said. “Students use it to relax — (community members) go running there. The project is about protecting a fantastic urban green space in the heart of Albuquerque.” Despite Schmidly’s suggestion, the 80-acre course has remained undeveloped. UNM’s North and South Golf Courses cost a combined $2.4 million to operate and reported a loss of $521,000 in 2011, according to UNM’s budget report. Regent Finance Chair Don Chalmers said UNM is open to the proposal, but said he can’t guarantee the board will accept the offer. “I am very open-minded to what Commissioner Stebbins has proposed,” he said. “But I am only one
Adria Malcolm / Daily Lobo The Bernalillo County Commission unanimously voted to offer UNM $1.5 million to leave the North Campus golf course free of any commercial or residential development for the next 25 years. The golf course is used to host the UNM Cross Country Invitational, and members of the community use it for jogging, walking and golfing. regent and I guess I have to see more details. We certainly do not have any immediate plans to develop the land and if she wants to get commitment from us and help our budget, we will certainly entertain that.” Chalmers said the regents tabled plans to develop over the course following opposition from the community.
“We looked at that five or six years ago as a way to retire bonds the University had sold … (but) we went through the process and the neighborhood did not want that, and we respected that,” he said. Since the early 2000s, members of the North Campus Neighborhood Association have advocated leaving the course undeveloped, submitting
official letters to UNM that were included in the University’s Master Plan in 2009. Vice President of the association, Tim Davis, volunteers as a marshal on the course, and said the area is important to the neighborhood, as well as the environment of Albuquerque as a whole. “When there are 75,000 to 100,000
cars on the road every day we need something to offset that,” he said. “Most of the (Downtown and University) area is hard-scaped, and this green area with trees provides storm drainage and helps with pollution.” An environmental impact study has not been done on the site to determine the effect it has on Albuquerque’s pollution levels.
Regent speaks on proposed tuition and fees hikes
Don Chalmers/UNM Regent
by Avicra Luckey aluckey@unm.edu
During a March 12 meeting, the Board of Regents proposed an initial budget which called for a 3 percent tuition increase for next year and a $77 increase in fees. The Board of Regents increased tuition 5.5 percent for the 2011-2012 school year, 7.9 percent in 2010-2011 and 5 percent in 20092010, which makes the proposed increase in tuition the lowest in recent years. The Board of Regents has yet
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to finalize either the tuition or fee increases and will discuss the budget further on March 23 before approving the final budget April 27. Fees have been dropping. In the 2009-2010 school year, students paid $514 per semester; the following year fees fell to $486.80 and have stayed consistent since then. With recommendation from the Student Fee Review Board, the fees could go as high as $503.20. If both the SFRB’s recommendations and the regents’ proposal are approved, fees could be at $580 next year. The Daily Lobo sat down with Vice President of the Board of Regents Don Chalmers to discuss the proposed increases. Chalmers said a 3 percent increase in tuition is needed for the University to be able to compete with its peers. Chalmers said the Provost’s Academic Strategic Plan, an initiative that includes hiring 20 tenure-track professors and undergraduate advisers, requires funding to be successful and that these funds will come
need to come from somewhere. The tuition increase would also go toward a 1.25 percent increase in pay for instructors and more funding for Athletics and UNM Libraries. Daily Lobo: What do you hope to accomplish with this proposed tuition-and-fee increase? Don Chalmers: Hopefully we will make the University a better place by fully funding, hopefully, the Provost Academic Strategic Plan. I think that’s extremely important and will advance the University academically. DL: Why did this happen over spring break? DC: We have meetings scheduled at all times. We did not take action (on the tuition-and-fee increase on March 12). As far as I’m concerned there was certainly nothing wrong with having a meeting on (March 12). We try to be as transparent as we can and any action that we take will not have taken place during any spring break. DL: Why does the funding for the Provost’s Academic Plan have to
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come from student fees and tuition? DC: It doesn’t come from fees. The Provost Strategic Plan’s funding all comes from general funding, I&G funding from the state, or funds that we get per tuition dollar. We’re spending about $4.2 million on the Provost’s plan. Most of the money that has to be spent is normal inflation in a budget, those dollars have to come from someplace. They come from operating budget funds which come from state funding and tuition. DL: Is it true the increase would help pay for a $1.5 million loan to Athletics in an effort to eliminate departmental debt? DC: There is a proposal to loan money to help the Athletics Department get out of the red and we certainly would never do that unless there was a plan to pay that money back. There’s been a lot of speculation about a new conference that would be formed and hopefully part of that new conference alignment would include new
monies coming into the University as members of the conference. DL: In reference to the proposed 1.25 percent increase in pay for instructors that would be paid for with the tuition hike, who does that benefit specifically? DC: I cannot answer that question directly we (regents) do not deal in the details of that. That’s the administration’s job to do that. It’s our job to say, after three years of no increases, we’d like to see some increases as best we can for the people who work at UNM. There is money in there for teaching assistants. DL: Some students say they cannot afford more than a $100 increase in tuition. What would you say to those students? DC: We’re trying to hold down as best we can tuition. If you would benchmark the University of New Mexico’s tuition versus all the other peer group universities in the country and around
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