Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

[goon]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

I agree that this is disappointing because my understanding was that this was a request to do more planning, and not approval of any specific project. Not sure why the BOR needed to say "don't work on this because we need to revise our overall plan, even though we know your projects will be in the revised plan." Ugh!

My thoughts are its the board of regents and the state wanting to have control over the whole process, to make themselves feel important. There is no reason why both schools could not advance further planning at the same time the BOR updates its overall masterplan, which to me seems like a lame reason to do so.

[filbert]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

My thoughts are its the board of regents and the state wanting to have control over the whole process, to make themselves feel important. There is no reason why both schools could not advance further planning at the same time the BOR updates its overall masterplan, which to me seems like a lame reason to do so.

My reading is that the South Dakota Board of Regents simply doesn't have its sh*^ together. The line about "having to update their 10-year capital outlay" is utter nonsense. Having to take months to do it is clear evidence of incompetence, IMHO. Take the entire wish list of projects from the institutions, put them into an Excel spreadsheet and take maybe a week to get finger-in-the-air cost estimates, and you could have something worked up--if you had your act together.

It is not as if the proposal--from SDSU at least--is anything like a surprise to the BOR.

If I was a SD legislator I'd be preparing a list of extremely uncomfortable questions for the Board to answer next legislative session about exactly why their pants were so far down around their ankles when these requests from the state's two largest universities came in that they had to bring the PLANNING for these major projects to a screeching halt for three to six months.

Questions like:
"You say you needed to update your 10-year capital outlay estimate. Why did you not have a valid and current 10-year capital outlay estimate available that you could plug these projects into?

When was the last time you updated that estimate?

What is the Board Office's schedule for updating this estimate, and what is the procedure you use to do so?

Do you update it on a regular basis, or do you just update it on an ad-hoc basis. If it's ad-hoc, what are the criteria for triggering an update--is it a certain dollar level of projects, or do political considerations enter in to these decisions?

Why did you not inform the institutions in advance that these procedures would be necessary to update the capital outlay estimate when they propose major projects?

(I had a couple more questions but they involved the Board and their office's ability to locate portions of their anatomies with both hands, road maps, MRI images, and flashlights, so I decided to let those questions go . . . for now . . .)

[1stRowFANatic]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Filbert nailed it. This type of oversight hurts every institution in SD, not just SDSU.

[zooropa]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

BoR ~ IUPUI eligibility committee.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=5041677

Although the university had an eligibility committee in place, it did not meet during the four years of the violations.

In some ways the BoR is like hip pockets on a shirt.

[JimmyJack]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Maybe somebody knows the answer to this question: Does this mean SDSU and USD have to stop working entirely on these projects? Can they still be talking to potential donors? I know they can't do actual design work.

I guess the question is what can they continue to do?

I kind of wonder, also, if there is a political angle here. The Regents are asking the Legislature to restore funding cut last year (not an increase, but restoration of cuts). This request is coming in what we know will be a very tough session, with huge shortfalls expected. Maybe, given that most people probably don't understand the difference between a capital project and an ongoing budget, they don't want people thinking "we" have the money for stadiums and arenas while "we" are asking for ongoing funding to be restored. A lot of people might not understand the distinction there.

It's the "they got money for stadiums, but they want more money for learnin' " mentality out there that they're trying to overcome. Yes, it means these projects get kicked down the road a year, but maybe the Regents are just trying to keep things clear for the Legislature to consider restoring that lost funding.

Just a guess. No inside information here.

[propar80]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Maybe somebody knows the answer to this question: Does this mean SDSU and USD have to stop working entirely on these projects? Can they still be talking to potential donors? I know they can't do actual design work.

I guess the question is what can they continue to do?

I'm fairly certain that this step that was presented to the board was to enable SDSU/USD to get the plans, $$, Etc. together so they could really go to potentional donors and say: "Here's what it's going to cost and this is the plan and what it may look like...here is what I need from you $$$."
This really gets donors/investors excited. You can only Pie-in-the-sky it with "real" donors/investors for so long. I guess that will have to do for the next 3-6 months to let the BOR get their duck$hit in a row, when they knew this was coming for some time.

Absolutely zero excuse for this. 49th-50th in everything SD does. This is just one small example of why.

Go Jacks!!

[Jacked_Up]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

I agree that the regents' thumb-sucking decision was very disappointing. For an agency that supposedly champions learning and state advancement, it sure thinks and acts small. Very, very small. The regents are contributing nothing to the projects but delay, perhaps to justify their existence. Gubernatorial candidates, as well as legislators, ought to asking a lot of questions.

[bigticket1]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

I think the problem starts with the philosophy of the State Legislature,whose greatest goal is to keep South Dakota one of the lowest-taxed states. Being a Minnesota resident, who believe me doesn't like paying the state taxes we do,but also realizing that you get what you pay for. Throwing money at every problem is not the answer,but sometimes you need to make investments to make things better. I couldn't believe during the last session when a number of cities/towns were all flatly denied the chance to ask there residents for minor increases in their local sales tax to try to better their communities.

[hareball]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

I agree that the regents' thumb-sucking decision was very disappointing. For an agency that supposedly champions learning and state advancement, it sure thinks and acts small. Very, very small. The regents are contributing nothing to the projects but delay, perhaps to justify their existence. Gubernatorial candidates, as well as legislators, ought to asking a lot of questions.

The candidates and legislators are a lot of the same people that balanced last years state budget primarily by cutting funding for higher education. They also wanted to have funds set aside from fundraising efforts, to pay for maintenance of any new facilities. We need to bend their ear every chance we get that higher education is an investment not an expense. Athletics also help draw donated money back to a university and a lot of times that money is earmarked for more than athletics

[zooropa]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Here's my beef:

The BoR just recently released that $1.97B economic impact study right?

When was the last time they did something like that to generate positive coverage of the regental institutions?

Can't remember it can you?

That's because the BoR is absolutely USELESS at telling the story of the regental schools.

USELESS.

Look at these press releases:
http://www.sdbor.edu/mediapubs/pressreleases/2010.htm

A 'record levels of research' presser, and a press release boosting the Opportunity Scholarship.

That's a total of three proactive press releases over TEN MONTHS (I'm not going to count *both* economic impact press releases).

Three.

That's not even one every three months.

Look at what they did during the legislative session? Anything? Nothing.

[LakeJack]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Who has contact info for the individual Regents so we can contact them?

[jacksfaninne]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Contrast with the University of Nebraska.

Last week Tom Osborne presents to regents a $55.5 million plan to add 5,000 seats to Memorial stadium and $4.75 million plan to build indoor baseball/softball practice facility.

This week (today), regents approve both plans.

[22jack]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Wow...$55 Million to add 5,000 seats. We want $55 Million for a whole new stadium.

[zooropa]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Contrast with the University of Nebraska.

Well, in all fairness, that football program has a bit too much power. There should be a happy medium between fiscal oversight and, say, calling for the chancellor's head when the football team has a bad season.

[JimmyJack]

Re: Preliminary Athletics Facility Plan

Aberdeen American News (among others) capitol reporter Bob Mercer on the Regents' rejection:

http://my605.com/pierrereview/?p=2837

A bit snarky about the Argus coverage, but here's the operative paragraph:

"It’s a matter of political timing as much as anything, because none of those projects would have directly received a dime of taxpayers’ money. Student fees, grants and donations would have paid for them. Nonetheless, a nucleus of regents — Terry Baloun, Harvey Jewett and Randy Morris — decided now was not the time, with state government running on empty and the recession’s grip still showing in South Dakota’s unemployment rate — to be proposing big spending on big projects that aren’t clearly related to academics."