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Post Info TOPIC: Campus for sale
Unrealtor

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Campus for sale
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Local work crews from a company owned by longtime, outspoken Thames backer, Lawrence Warren, have been busily blacktopping campus streets for two months.  Thames wants to make sure that Brett Favre Boulevard isn't 100 yards of potholes.


Dozens of new antique-style streetlights are also popping up all around the administration building, along with new cement supports and new underground wiring.  Aren't we in the middle of a budget crisis where "every expense" will be re-examined?


Physical plant crews are spiffing up older buildings, especially Joseph Greene (business), by painting (a common Thames solution to problems!) over the mottled grey concrete faux-columns.  Though the paint will peel off in a few years of Deep South sun, it will be the next president's mess to clean up.  Heck, it might even be the MSU president's mess soon enough.


Watch for Mader and Moore's forthcoming story on campus byootification.  Don't expect an accounting of the costs.


It's all about surfaces.  Pointless, painted surfaces.  The foundation's still rotten.


Caveat emptor.



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Shock Absorber

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Well, I'm glad they're filling in the potholes. After my last cruise through the USM campus (an expedition I prefer to avoid), I had to get my pickup truck realigned.

It would've been worse, but the deepest pothole had a Kia in it, so I didn't bottom out...

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Don't be penny wise and pound foolish

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Yeah, and painting is a good idea. Cheap maintenence that can save big bucks down the road.

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Mr. Wizard

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Is there a word for purposefully missing another's point?

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off the plantation

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When I first saw the USM campus, 90's, I was perplexed to find that them big ole white pillars on the Dome are hollow and wooden, not solid stone, like their design might lead you to think. At the time it occurred to me that their hollowness might betray a kind of general hollowness about USM, that they might symbolize superficiality and a highly derivitive nature. The Dome is, someone told me, a sort of knocked off copy of the one at Thomas Jefferson's U of Virginia, after all.


Back then, though, I immediately decided that I was reading too much into those hollow corinthians, and being too hasty in making judgements about a place I had just met. Until I picked up this thread I'd forgotten all about that brief moment of forboding when I rapped my knuckles on the Dome and heard a hollowness resound there.


Times change. Appearance may turn out to be all, after all.


 



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question of priorities

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Below is the beginning portion of a message from the Gulf Coast faculty listserve. It details the minutes of a meeting of something called the "College Liason Committee". In that meeting Ken Malone and the Gulf PArk physical plant cheif, David Taylor, state that $623,000 will be spent for a paving project on the Gulf Park campus, and that the paving will start in January 2005.


Hmmmmm . . . $623,000. The legislature's talking layoffs but there's $623,000 in the budget for paving on the Coast. Seems to me that in lean times like now, SJT should take care of the people first and the potholes second. There's too many cars on the Hattiesburg campus anyhow. Add togetherthe cost of the rennovations Unrealtor describes and the $623,000 appropriated for paving at Gulf PArk and you get around $1,000,000. That's a lot of books for the library, journal subscriptions, scholarships. How are these decisions made?


How long, oh lord with this bull**** go on?


 


 


"College Liaison Committee (CLC)--Minutes for December 13th, 2004 meeting

NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, January 19 at 1pm

Representatives present:
Lin Agler-College of Education & Psychology
Beth LaFleur- College of Business & Economic Development
James Miller-College of Science & Technology
Shahdad Naghshpour--College of Business & Economic Development
Will Watson, CLC President-College of Arts & Letters
Lela Weems--College of Education & Psychology
Debra Copeland-College of Health

Representatives absent:
Julie Cwikla-College of Science & Technology
Ann Tucker-College of Health
Douglas Bristol-College of Arts & Letters

Guests: Ken Malone, Chief Operations Officer, and David Taylor, Director of
Physical Plant  . . ."

" Mr. Taylor reported that there were many paving and landscaping projects
underway. The new parking areas, including the area in front of Hardy Hall,
behind the Toy Library, and the entrance from 3rd street will all be paved
beginning in a month, and the bidding is complete. The bid was $623,000. He
pointed out that there is not enough money to do all the lighting that they
wanted to do, that they hoped to use new fixtures that will provide more
lighting, but the Bureau of Building was dictating the type of light fixtures
to be utilized.  Mr. Taylor said there was money available for 16 new lighting
fixtures, but he was trying to get less expensive light approved so he could
purchase more than 16 . . ."



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Invictus

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quote:
Originally posted by: question of priorities
"Add togetherthe cost of the rennovations Unrealtor describes and the $623,000 appropriated for paving at Gulf PArk and you get around $1,000,000. That's a lot of books for the library, journal subscriptions, scholarships. How are these decisions made?
How long, oh lord with this bull**** go on?"


The answer, which will be parrotted by any administrator you care to pin on the inssue, is that paving & similar projects are funded from the capital budget, which cannot be used for "education & general" expenses. Nobody ever addresses how there can be capital monies when the E&G is being cut. And nobody ever points out that when administrators want to do so, they can easily transfer E&G funds to capital budgets.

So, salaries, books, supplies, all that stuff comes from E&G budget. Times are tough. And the money "set aside" for capital projects can't be used for anything else.

Or so the story goes.

The real question is, What genius sets aside large sums in capital budgets when the E&G budget is likely to be cut? The answer to that question is not in Hattiesburg or Long Beach. The answer is in Jackson.

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stinky cheese man

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invictus--so true on capital budgets. during the fleming administration the same issue came up. Linda Gilbert the vp for finance took flack for putting up new parking zone signs during a time of financial distress. said that it came from a capital budget and if it wasn't spent on signage, it wouldn't be spent. so we have new parking zone signs.

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Invictus

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I have also observed administrators (not at USM, BTW) transfer money from E&G to cover capital projects. The twister is that I have never in over 25 years observed an administrator ask to have capital monies transferred to E&G. I'm sure it has happened, but I've never seen it.

Does USM consider technology (computers, infrastructure, etc) to be capital expenses?

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