Following a story published in The Crow’s Nest on Sept. 4 on the evolution of the student center project, university system officials disputed the accuracy of statements made by a former USF St. Petersburg administrator and the students that helped lobby for the building’s creation.
“President Genshaft wanted this,” said former Student President James Scott, referring to the University Student Center. “She was such a sturdy advocate about this … and as such, she had a lot of sway. The building is exactly what she wanted it to be.”
What she wanted it to be, said Scott and former Student President Jon Ellington who both lobbied for the building in Tallahassee, was a multipurpose student center that combined housing, dining and a large meeting space. Scott and Ellington said they were told that without the additional revenue from housing and the ballroom, the building could not be constructed.
“At the strong recommendation of President Genshaft,” said former Regional Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Kent Kelso, “we started looking at a multipurpose facility.” Kelso had been hired by the university to help jumpstart its nascent resident student facilities and services. In his career he has ushered in the creation of nearly 30 buildings, primarily residence halls, a feat he is now repeating at Texas A&M-Texarkana.
Ultimately, the student services originally planned for the building, including spaces for student organizations and a health clinic, were removed due to increasing costs. In exchange for the $13.80 per credit hour fee, students received a $2.9 million renovation of the Campus Activities Center, now Student Life Center, to house the clinic and student organizations.
But the students’ financial obligation to the USC, over half of activities fees collected, remained. Eventually Scott, as Student President, sent a memo to the administration calling for a return to the plan originally supported by students. “It was never understood among students that the new student center would actually become the ‘food court and ballroom center,’ ” he wrote.
“I think the students got quite a bargain,” said Assistant Regional Vice Chancellor of Finance Julie Jakway. “The students at the time chose this decision, and for the campus, it appears to be a relatively good one.”
Regarding Genshaft’s involvement with the building, said the statements made by Scott, Ellington and Kelso were “opinion, not fact” said Vice President of Finance John Long.
“To say the president influenced the decision (to remove student services) is inaccurate and slanderous,” Long said. “Whoever is making that comment is insinuating all kinds of things with no factual statement behind it other than innuendo.”
Long dismissed that the students and administrator that made the remarks were intimately involved with the project. “I’m sure for every interview you have there is a counter interview,” he said.
USF system lobbyist Mark Walsh said Genshaft’s only involvement with the building was to make sure it received adequate funding. Without the additional revenue, the 30-year, $18 million bond could not be adequately funded, he said, due to a 5 percent cap on allowable debt service by activity fees.
However, the decision to remove student services and the resulting change to the campus master plan was made prior to the 2010 legislative session, when USF system lobbyists, with the assistance of the students, won the right to raise local fees—the combined totals of activities, health and athletics fees—to the statewide average.
The majority was added to the activities and service fee, increasing it from $10.40 to $24.80 per credit hour, to facilitate the construction of the student center. In 2010, the student government passed a non-binding resolution to set aside $13.80 per credit hour of the fee to pay debt and operational costs of the building.
But the legislative victory fell short of the students’ and administration’s desire for a specific, statutorily-defined use for the fee increase. The original bill submitted jointly to the Florida House of Representatives and Senate by Rep. Darryl Rouson and Sen. Dennis Jones would have superseded an existing law that caps the amount of activities fees that can be used for debt service at 5 percent of the prior year’s intake.
At USF Tampa, the Marshall Student Center is primarily funded with a special fee, allowing a greater amount of funding by students for debt service.
The university changed the building’s plan in late 2009, removing student organizations and services. This decision was made prior to knowing how the state legislative session in 2010 would shake out.
Walsh, who said he had not read the article prior to contacting The Crow’s Nest to dispute the article’s validity, said the article suggested that the majority of the fee was being used to pay the bond debt, which would be illegal under the previously mentioned statute.
This point was not addressed in the article as The Crow’s Nest waited for additional clarification from university finance officials. Since the week prior to the publication of the article a month ago, The Crow’s Nest has received none of the records requested under the authority of Florida open records laws, including line-item operating budgets, auxiliary service budgets and records indicating when and how the debt service on the building has been paid.
Initially, USFSP officials told The Crow’s Nest that of the $13.80 per credit hour fee allocated to the building, $13.42 was for debt service and the remaining 38 cents was earmarked for operations expenditures.
These figures were a misnomer, said Jakway at a meeting with top USF financial officers and reporters from The Crow’s Nest on Sept. 15.
“The original (campus) board document approved $13.80, $13.42 for debt service and what we’d need for construction plus a portion of it will go to debt service,” Jakway said. “The difference plus the 38 cents is for operations.”
Based on predicted fee revenues for the 2012-13 academic year, the figures originally provided would have set aside roughly $1.8 million for debt service and $51,000 for operations. The Crow’s Nest had asked where the roughly $500,000 beyond the $1.3 million required for debt service would end up, and was told in the short term the additional revenue would fill a debt service reserve fund established to earn the bond a higher rating by Standard & Poor and therefore a lower interest rate.
According to the clarified numbers, Jakway said nearly $580,000 of the nearly $1.9 million collected was for bond service, below the system-wide cap, with the rest of the fees paying for building operations and required reserve accounts.
The cap is determined by system-wide fee intake, approximately $16 million last year, allowing nearly $800,000 for debt service across the three USF campuses. Now, USFSP, which contributes about 21 percent of all activities fee collection to the system, is utilizing over 70 percent of available funding for debt service.
USF Tampa Student President and Trustee Brian Goff, whose campus supplies nearly three-quarters of total activities fees, said his government, nor any that preceded it, had agreed to allow USFSP to utilize such an incommensurate portion of the debt funding limit.
