Sunday, November 22, 2009 East Central Illinois
The Answer Book 2005
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The big kid on the block UI touches C-U in many ways BY JODI HECKEL © 2009 THE NEWS-GAZETTE URBANA - The University of Illinois provides jobs for almost 10,000 people and educates the nearly 40,000 students who come here every year to study. It brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax support and research grants and contracts. And it gives area residents access to theater, music and dance performances, and Big Ten sporting events. And the UI is affected by the state's financial health, which has meant funding cuts in the last several years. The UI was asked to give money back to the state in the 2002 fiscal year, suffered cuts the next two years, and received the same amount of state support last year and for the current fiscal year, meaning a loss of $130 million in direct state support since 2002. The level of state funding about $698 million is now at about the same level it was 10 years ago. When adjusted for inflation, state support is below what it was in 1980, said Randy Kangas, assistant vice president for planning and budgeting.
The UI has had a record enrollment of freshmen each of the last two years, and officials expect another record number this fall, with an estimated 7,500 freshmen starting school here. More students means more tuition money. Incoming students will pay about 9 percent more than those last year, and juniors and seniors will pay an extra 7 percent this year. The students in the current sophomore class are the first to have their tuition guaranteed to remain the same for four years. The tuition increases will help pay for salary increases for faculty and staff. UI administrators say one of their top priorities is to remain competitive on faculty salaries with their peers. The state has not provided a capital budget for two years, meaning maintenance and repairs at the UI have become even more backlogged. But the physical campus has kept growing, with projects that were already funded or are being paid for with private donations or student fees. Under construction now are new buildings for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Institute for Genomic Biology, which will provide research space for biologists, engineers, computer scientists and others to solve problems using information from genome sequencing. The UI Alumni Association is building a new alumni center along Lincoln Avenue, and a block or two to the south, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences is building a facility for the UI's Family Resiliency Program, which promotes research and education to help families deal with stress and balance work and family life. UI graduate Doris Kelley Christopher, founder of The Pampered Chef, and her husband donated $11.5 million for the building and for an endowed chair in the program. The Division of Campus Recreation finished an expansion and renovation of its Campus Recreation Center-East, and work is scheduled to begin this fall on the Intramural Physical Education Building. The facility will close for two years while it is being remodeled. The majority of the campus is on the Urbana side of Wright Street, and when the UI acquires new land, that means another plot not subject to property taxes. UI officials are looking into ways to generate more tax revenue for the city of Urbana while redeveloping its Orchard Downs student housing complex. The apartment buildings are on a 160-acre site bordered by Lincoln Avenue, Race Street, Windsor Road and Orchard Street. Options being considered include single-family housing, retail space and a retirement community, and possibly moving the student housing to just north of Windsor Road and west of Fourth Street. Many nearby Urbana residents are opposed to large retail operations in the area and want to preserve the student housing and green space. Champaign and Urbana city officials and UI administrators have been working together to create an economic development district in the south area of campus that would include the UI's Research Park, the site of a proposed hotel and conference center, and possibly the redevelopment of the Orchard Downs student housing complex. They say creating the district would allow them to share tax revenue from the area more fairly between the two cities' taxing bodies, including the school districts, and end competition between the two cities for economic development projects. Tax money from the district would be used to lure new high-tech businesses and develop infrastructure, and money would also be distributed to the cities' taxing districts. Creating the district would require state lawmakers to pass special legislation to allow tax sharing by the school districts. Reservations by Champaign school district officials have put such legislation on hold for now. The Champaign school board approved a qualified letter of support for the legislation at the end of May, too late for it to be passed in the spring session. The board's concern is it will receive additional students from a relocation of the Orchard Downs complex without receiving full tax support for them. |
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