Construction, maintenance projects to be postponed

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Millions of dollars in construction and maintenance projects will be put on hold this year as the university generates reserves to prepare for future fiscal struggles.

“We may have a significant failure somewhere, and we’re just going to have to scramble and figure it out,” said Kathy Lindahl, MSU’s assistant vice president for finance and operations.

Vice President for Finance and Operations Fred Poston announced the changes to university operations at the MSU Board of Trustees meeting Oct. 30, in addition to possible academic cuts announced by MSU Provost Kim Wilcox. The delays in construction and maintenance projects were some of them.

“It’s not the case we’re not fixing anything,” Poston said. “It’s only the stuff we could wait on. … We’re fixing what we absolutely have to.”

Gus Gosselin, director of building services, said the university tries to keep things running for as long as possible before making repairs.

“We replace stuff just before (it) breaks down,” he said. “Therefore, they’re just in time — we replace it just in time.”

MSU typically has about $20 million per year for “just-in-time” projects such as those on steam tunnels, roads, windows and roofs, Lindahl said.

Because of poor endowment performance, the university has about $9 million available for high-priority repairs, she said.

“We try to predict as close as possible to failure so we don’t spend the money too soon,” Lindahl said. “We looked at those projects and said some of those projects are a greater risk if they fail to the university than others.”

Underground steam tunnels that are more than 100 years old will not be replaced this year, Poston said. Steam pipes run through the tunnels and provide heating and cooling for buildings throughout campus.

“They won’t last much longer,” Poston said. “If they caved in and rupture a steam pipe, then we wouldn’t have heat in one or more buildings on the campus. … We can get away with this for a year, maybe two, but that’s it.”

Some road replacement also is being put on hold, Poston said.

There is not a lot to fix on campus, but at the end of the year, there could be about $30 million in repairs, he said.

“We didn’t build the whole university on the same day,” Poston said. “Things break at different dates and times. … Right now we’re going through a low spot in terms of things breaking.”

The amount of reserves generated from delaying the projects varies and could be spent on a variety of things, Poston said.

“It’s not any one thing it gets spent on,” he said. “In a year, there’s probably 100 different things that might cause you to have to spend out of that.”

It’s hard to predict when the projects might be taken up again and it could be as long as three years, Lindahl said.

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