After several unsuccessful attempts, the University of Hawaii says it expects to finally begin whittling down its massive repair backlog now that lawmakers have agreed to let UH float revenue bonds that would be repaid in part with tuition. The university also secured more state-backed bonds than in previous years to perform routine maintenance that will keep the backlog from growing.

Repair needs total $503 million across the 10-campus system — up from $460 million three years ago — with most of the work needed on the flagship Manoa campus.

University officials say the backlog, which includes repairs that date back more than a decade, continues to grow because the university hasn’t received sufficient support for facilities from the state in past years. UH says it needs $60 million to $80 million annually for what’s known as capital renewal, or basic facilities maintenance, in order to begin addressing deferred maintenance.

“The university, of course, would prefer to get (general obligation) bonds — it’s cheaper for the state, it’s cheaper for the university, it’s cheaper for students,” Kalbert Young, UH’s vice president for budget and finance, said in an interview. “The approach of revenue bonds is only because the university historically has not gotten sufficient G.O. bonds to address deferred maintenance.”

Young said for the fiscal year that begins July 1, “it seems that the Legislature has provided enough to at least address capital renewal and make small headway into deferred maintenance.”

The strategy of using state-backed bonds and tuition-backed revenue bonds has been controversial.

UH in 2013 had proposed using revenue bonds to eliminate its entire backlog over six years, but legislators bristled at the idea of saddling students with long-term debt. The university last year asked the Legislature for state-backed bonds to eliminate the backlog but was again rejected.

This year the Board of Regents requested both. It sought $131.3 million in state-backed bonds for 71 deferred maintenance and capital renewal projects. Lawmakers included $48.6 million of the request in the state budget, which has been sent to Gov. David Ige for approval. The Legislature added in $15 million for deferred maintenance at the community colleges and $13 million for the athletic department.

“That’s a change at least from the last three years, when the university didn’t get any significant amount of lump-sum funding for capital renewal at this level,” Young said.

UH also sought authority to issue up to $100 million in revenue bonds, which would be repaid over time with university revenues. Roughly one-third of UH’s revenues come from tuition, an additional third comes from the state and the rest comes from various sources including research grants, housing and athletics.

A proposed 2 percent tuition increase that would take effect in fall 2017 is tied to this bond request.

An earlier Senate version of the budget included $108 million in revenue bond authority, but following negotiations with the House, the amount was reduced to $30 million.

Rep. Isaac Choy, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, has been vocal about his opposition to using tuition for the repair backlog. He inserted language in the state budget that would require the university to submit a report ahead of the 2018 legislative session on the specific revenues, “including the name of the fund and the revenue sources of that fund,” that are used or will be used to repay debt on any revenue bonds sold.

Choy (D, Manoa-Punahou-Moiliili) contends the university told him that student tuition would not be used to repay the debt.

“Vice President Kalbert Young assured me that it will not be paid out of student tuitions, and that he has other sources of revenues,” Choy told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “That’s the reason why I put that budget proviso in so that the university can show us where it gets the money from.”

Young says he never made that guarantee.

“I explicitly told Rep. Choy that we would only sell enough revenue bonds for which we have revenues to support. And revenue bonds are paid for with all of the revenues of the university, the largest of which is tuition,” Young said. “So that would not be a realistic expectation, to have revenue bonds not paid for with tuition. It’s not to say that only tuition will go to pay for revenue bonds, but there would be no way you could claim that we’re not going to use tuition.”

Because the budgeted amounts are lower than UH’s request, the university is working to compile a list of priorities.

“We’re running a list of projects now that will address a combination of capital renewal, deferred maintenance as well as modernizing and upgrading facilities so that functionally it meets 21st-century requirements,” Jan Gouveia, UH’s vice president for administration, said in an interview.

“The backlog is definitely there. It’s really trying to compete for which projects need the most attention, plus what stage of readiness is it at as well as, again, functional need, and we sort of layer that all together to start prioritizing the projects,” she said. “The queue just continues to back up, so we’ve got projects ready to hit the streets as soon as the money is released.”