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“After consultation with legislators, it was decided that trying to rush a special bill through the legislative process wasn’t the way to go,” said David Miller, UW System assistant vice president for planning.
Although residence halls are financed through borrowing repaid from dormitory fees, the Assembly, concerned about the increasing amount of state borrowing, balked last summer at including dorm projects on other campus.
Miller said last year’s legislative climate wasn’t a major consideration in deciding to defer the project but couldn’t be ignored either.
Passing a special bill on the dormitory project with only 15 “floor days” left for general business before the current session closes March 13 would be “difficult but not impossible,” said Miller.
Instead, it was considered prudent to include the $22 million to $23 million dorm in the 2009-11 capital budget.
Meanwhile, planners in La Crosse and Madison will continue to scrutinize the dorm request for presentation to the UW Regents in August, then the governor’s office and finally the Legislature in February or March 2009, said Miller.
If approved, UW-L still will be on track to start residence hall construction in late 2009 or early 2010 as originally planned, said UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow.
UW-L will go ahead with initial planning on the project, which it will pay for, said Gow.
“We are taking a bit of a risk here, in that we would draw up plans and pay for them and then not get the approval to move forward, but we feel that because this is something our students have been so strongly interested in that the legislators will agree that this is the right thing for the university,” Gow said Wednesday.
“It would have been nice to get the go ahead today, but we understand why that wasn’t possible, and we can certainly be patient and wait until the appropriate time.”
Tribune reporter KJ Lang contributed to this story.
