A growing number of University of California campus facilities are aging and falling into disrepair, becoming one of the UC’s biggest costs and problems for the future, according to a recent report by a nonpartisan state analysts office.
Deferred maintenance projects are building repairs or upgrades that have been delayed, often due to funding constraints. These delays may raise the risk of building safety on campus and mean higher costs for emergency repairs or major renovations when such problems are prolonged, according to the report.
“Deferred maintenance is a major problem for (the UC), running into hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Patrick Lenz, vice president of UC budget and capital resources.
The University operates nearly 5,800 buildings across its10campuses, according to theUniversity’s 2014-15 Budget of Operations. About 50 percent of buildings – mostly those used for teaching and research – are eligible for state funding. Other buildings, including medical facilities and student housing, have to be self-funded by the school.
More than half of the University facilities that qualify for state funding are over 30 years old, the Budget of Operations report said. The report added that these buildings should not wait any longer for the upgrades they need.
UCLA currently has more than 120 deferred maintenance projects totaling $770 million, said UCLA spokesman Ricardo Vazquez in an email statement.
But the UC as a whole was unable to provide specific values for its deferred maintenance backlog as it is currently assessing campus facilities using a new methodology, which will be completed in 2017.
The University estimates that high-priority deferred maintenance costs, for projects that are critical and can no longer be delayed, are expected to rise by an estimated $100 million by 2017.
The 2014 Five-Year Infrastructure Plan released by the Governor’s office in January – the first since 2008 – highlighted deferred maintenance of state infrastructure as a major priority.
This year, the state proposed $815 million to cover an estimated $65 billion in maintenance costs for everything from transportation, healthcare and education. Most of the state’s infrastructure funding, totaling about $56.7 billion, will go to new capital construction projects instead.
While maintenance needs are accumulating, the UC continues to invest in new capital projects to meet expanding enrollment and research demands, Lenz said. The UC balances maintenance with new capital investment by comparing the costs of repair to the costs of building something completely new.
At UC Santa Cruz’s campus, a new coastal biology building is currently in the works, due to overwhelming student demand for the program, he said.
Maintenance works at UCLA include seismic retrofitting and fire safety system upgrades for Center for Health Sciences buildings, as well as seismic upgrading of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, which was constructed between 1924 and 1926.
The lack of state funding to the UC for maintenance projects has been a problem for many years.
Lenz said the state has not provided any funding for deferred maintenance to the UC in over 20 years.
Last year, the passage of Assembly Bill 94 allowed the UC to take funding of capital projects into its own hands. Because of the bill, the UC can now finance its own construction projects from alternative sources without having to wait for state funding, Lenz said.
“We were looking for a new mechanism to address our capital needs, because clearly the state wasn’t funding any capital anymore,” Lenz said.
The state is concerned about the amount of debt it has taken on, and its caution against incurring more debt is understandable, he added.
The UC has looked to alternative funding sources to support its capital projects, including donations and UC bonds, according to the it’s 2013-22 Ten-Year Capital Financial Plan.
Each year, campuses develop their proposed capital priorities and submit them to the Office of the President for review, Lenz said. Then in November, the UC Board of Regents decides on and allocates funding to each campus’ infrastructure needs.
UCLA is in the midst of executing a $5.4 million deferred maintenance program authorized for the current fiscal year. Another $8 million has been committed for the 2014-2015 fiscal year, Vazquez said in a statement.