Work begins this month on a long-awaited renovation of the former Sinclair Library at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, transforming the venerable building into a Student Success Center that is expected to open in fall 2025.
At an estimated cost of $57 million, the student center work will cost $16 million more and open a year later than first planned in 2019, because of inflation and pandemic-related delays. It’s nonetheless good news that it’s been funded and will go forward.
Unlike the student center, other capital improvement projects (CIPs) have been stalled by the state Legislature. In what has become a predictable cycle, legislative leaders have chosen to ignore key parts of the university’s budget request, leaving UH to scramble for other funding sources or push back plans in the hope that legislators will see fit to fund them later.
It’s true that state spending that seemed justified early in the legislative session had to be pared back after state revenue estimates fell. Budget constraints are a legitimate reason to reduce proposed spending. And the Legislature has a necessary oversight role over how UH spends public money. But the process should be handled in a collaborative way, in good faith, with students as the first priority.
Too often, additions and deletions to the UH budget seem more impromptu — as during this session, when the Legislature authorized $63 million for a prototype artificial reef project, funding that the university said it did not request and is not prepared to spend. Surely that money could have been better directed elsewhere.
Such moves fuel public unease that other spending decisions were made without careful consideration of the university’s most pressing needs.
Under the current two-year budget authorized by the Legislature, UH reports that it will need to reprioritize and delay several deferred maintenance projects. UH requested $558 million in CIP funding, systemwide, over the two-year budget span. The Legislature appropriated $384 million.
Delays in infrastructure projects rarely result in cost savings. It’s a truism in public works that if it takes longer to finish it will cost more, whether from accumulated costs, rising expenses or inflation.
And CIP projects — repairs, renovations and improvements — on the Manoa campus are hardly a matter of little importance. Last year, the university reported that its deferred maintenance backlog, systemwide, had reached $863 million and counting.
In November, in its yearly update to the CIP Plan, UH noted that its annual budget couldn’t meet deferred maintenance shortfalls. To address the issue, it budgeted to “maximize the efficiency” of projects — for example, improving existing spaces while also designing facilities to be shared by departments or used for multiple purposes. Nonetheless, this budget falls short.
The $321 million in CIP funding remaining beyond those reef project dollars has been funneled disproportionately toward UH community colleges, university administrators said. They noted that $193.8 million, or 60% of that amount, goes to community colleges, although they make up 22% of UH’s physical square footage.
Meanwhile, each delayed project is subject to the cost-ballooning effect of inflation.
The 115,000-square-foot, “state of the art” student center has been designed to improve and enhance students’ experience at UH-Manoa. Since most UH students are commuters, such facilities encourage them to remain on campus, collaborating with fellow students and making the most of the university’s many services.
It’s similarly important that Hawaii’s only state-supported research institution be kept in repair and in a state of constant improvement, as a temple of education and a beacon for Hawaii’s aspirations. The buck stops — literally — with the Legislature on this issue.
