Crumbling Classrooms
State of Disrepair
Long-ignored maintenance backlog threatens the halls of higher education
The story has to be told, Jim Modig has been saying, but how to tell it? When visitors drive down Jayhawk Boulevard, admiring lovely buildings and the captivating streetscape, how can he convince anyone that danger lurks, that beauty in the eyes of our beholders conceals ugly rot?
The matter is urgent. "Deferred maintenance," as the problem is commonly known on campuses across the state, is a priority issue as the Kansas Board of Regents prepares its agenda for this month's opening of the Legislature. Pipes, tunnels, rocks, roofs, paint, wires, electrical boxes, retaining walls, air conditioners and expansion joints are not terribly sexy subjects to read about, they aren't fun for Modig to explain in expert detail, and they won't make for barrels of laughs when presented to legislative committees, but the stories must be told.
More important, they must be heard.
"I think people become somewhat complacent because the buildings don't look that bad," says Modig, a'73, KU's director of design and construction management. "But there is a serious need here. Water pipes rust out, drain pipes rust out, and those are behind the walls. Out of sight, out of mind, but it's still a deteriorating condition."
In a new-age world of high-tech wizardry, bricks and mortar have been enlisted as dismissive symbols for old ways of thinking. They still matter, especially for sprawling university campuses, but if bricks, mortar, pipes and roofs don't grab anyone's attention, perhaps money will: $584 million.
That's the estimated tally for "deferred maintenance" at the six Kansas Board of Regents universities.
"If we stay at the status quo, in 10 years this $584 million problem could approach being an $800 million problem," says Eric King, the Regents' director of facilities. "What we have [concluded] here is, I believe, very conservative. I certainly believe we can justify the $584 million, and, in fact, I think it could be more than that."
* * *
Modig estimates that 10 percent of Mount Oread's tunnels need repair, at a total cost of about $8 million. Steam-pipe expansion joints require regular maintenance, but Modig and other supervisors must constantly decide whether the worst sections are safe enough for workers to venture close; should a pipe collapse through rusted support beams, the 375-degree steam would kill anyone in the tunnel by instantly absorbing all available oxygen. "These tunnels have been there for maybe 100 years," Modig says, "and some have never had any maintenance done on them at all." The tunnel crossing Jayhawk Boulevard at Dyche Hall required emergency replacement in 2004; had it failed, KU would have lost service to 500,000 square feet of building space and collections in the Natural History and Spencer Art museums would have been severely threatened.
Numbers compiled by King, Modig and their colleagues at each of the Regents' campuses are frankly overwhelming, both in size and volume. But some are both notable and memorable:
- KU's 123 Lawrence facilities, not including any contents, student unions or residential buildings, have a total replacement value of about $733 million. Anticipated deterioration of 2 percent a year—the figure agreed upon by national building councils as the absolute minimum cost of routine maintenance and renewal, excluding major infrastructure—should be expected to run up annual maintenance tabs of $14 million.
The Lawrence share of the statewide total is $160 million in deferred maintenance; boosted by 3-percent annual inflation, that can be expected to grow at least $4 million annually.
In fiscal 2006, KU will receive $2.9 million for deferred maintenance.
"We're deteriorating at a rate of $14 million a year and the inflation factor is $4 million a year, and we're not keeping up with either one of them," Modig says. "It's very frustrating."
Even if KU were to see its deferred maintenance budget triple to about $10 million, and remain at that level, maintenance needs still would fall behind by at least $8 to $10 million annually.
With Regents' facilities statewide worth $3.68 billion—or about two-thirds of all state-owned property—it is estimated that at least $74 million should be spent for annual maintenance (not including the already-accrued deferred maintenance needs of $584 million). In fiscal 2005, the state allocated $7 million.
- The KU numbers so far cited do not include KU Medical Center. The Kansas City complex estimates its deferred maintenance needs at $68 million.
The Medical Center offers the most graphic illustration of how neglect eventually becomes calamity: On June 20, 2004, a corroded hot-water pipe burst inside a fourth-floor wall of the main administration building, 80-year-old Murphy Hall. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many months of disrupted work time, were required to fix the pipe and the damage wreaked throughout the building.
- As recently as 1983, the Legislature approved less than $500,000 annually for rehabilitation and repair for all campus structures statewide. That number hit $1 million for the first time in 1990, and reached $2.4 million in 1992.
"Up until about 1991, the majority of state funds we received were for new building construction," King says. "Essentially, campuses weren't even getting enough money to reroof a building."
King says his predecessor, Warren Corman, e'50, now KU's architect, first convinced legislators to shift more of the Educational Building Fund to maintenance rather than construction. Since that time, King estimates, private gifts and all other non-state funds, including student and parking fees, funded 75 percent of all campus construction, with the state chipping in about 25 percent.
Even when a state-campus building is funded entirely with private dollars, it must first be approved by the Legislature, because all buildings on state land become, by statute, state property, and the state must assume maintenance responsibility. "These are state buildings on state land and, frankly, I think the citizens of the state of Kansas would want their buildings maintained and kept up to date, and not in ill repair or falling down," King says. "I think that the Regents' campuses have done their part or more in raising funds for needed buildings and any number of things."
- At KU, 38 percent of the structures are 20 to 40 years old, a number that virtually mirrors statewide percentages. And more than 40 percent of the buildings on Mount Oread are more than 40 years old. Even with proper maintenance, heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems cannot be expected to last more than 40 years; the average life span for mechanical systems is 23 years.
"I hate to refer to it in this way," Modig says, "but all too often we're in what I call 'crisis management mode.' We anticipate what our needs are going to be, but if something happens that becomes an emergency, then you shift gears and redirect the money. It's one of those kinds of operations."
* * *
Construction managers' fears came true Dec. 20, in a story about deferred maintenance published by the Topeka Capital-Journal. While detailing the structural failures of limestone exteriors on the Kansas State University campus and huge maintenance tabs being ignored at Regents institutions across the state, the capital-city newspaper also noted that Rep. Melvin Neufeld, the influential Ingalls Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, saw little "wiggle room in the state budget to pare down universities' maintenance needs."
Regardless of a lack of budgetary wiggle room, the paper reported, Neufeld was not convinced of the scope of the problem itself.
"You won't find many campuses at state institutions across the country," Neufeld told the Capital-Journal, "that are as good as ours."
How to fight the skin-deep beauty that belies deterioration of underground pipes, cloth-coated electrical wiring looped behind cinder-block walls, leaky roofs, crumbling stone and masonry, and heating and cooling systems that threaten the very existence of priceless art and natural-history collections?
Regents chair Richard Bond, a former Senate president from Overland Park, says lawmakers need to be guided through the magnitude of the problem with pictures, multiple examples of the urgency of the situation, and, most important, patient expectations and creative solutions for financing.
"The need is $584 million; well, I don't think anyone realistically believes we are going to be able to come up with creative funding that meets that big of a number," Bond says. "But we do need to come up with creative funding that begins to address the issue soon, and for the long term."
Bond, c'57, l'60, who as a veteran former legislator helped guide passage of the $161 million "Crumbling Classrooms" initiative in 1996, blames Regents and legislators for long ignoring the mounting campus maintenance crisis, but he also cites chief executives of the six Regents institutions for not bringing it to the Board of Regents sooner.
"Probably one of the reasons they haven't is because of the very difficult economic and fiscal situation in the state," Bond says. "So perhaps they have just felt like it was unsolvable, and as the economy is beginning to turn around, they bring it to us as something to address. And we're doing that."
It's hard to predict the chances for any maintenance-funds proposals, because no proposal has actually been created, let alone offered to lawmakers. All of the players are waiting on the Jan. 10 budget address by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, g'80.
"It's going to be a hard pill to swallow, because it's going to take a major infusion of money if we really want to take care of the problem," King says. "The campuses will continue to do the very best they can to put bandages on things, take care of the worst issues and so forth, but the problem is only going to get worse.
"As public servants, I think it's our duty to let people know there's a problem. If they don't know there's a problem, they certainly can't address it."
Once again, it will all come down to storytelling.
— Chris Lazzarino
