A6 • NEWS • NOVEMBER 19, 2009 • THE METROPOLITAN • This just in: Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same
as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lobby braves storm to face budget crisis
Student advocacy
group issues call
to political action
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu
Colorado’s student lobby is warn-
ing students to waste no time in or-
ganizing political action against the
state’s planned budget cuts to higher
education.
The Associated Students of
Colorado, a board of elected student
representatives from Colorado insti-
tutions of higher education, is the
students’ one political presence in
the Colorado legislature.
And blizzards, or at least the Nov.
14 snowstorm, did not stop repre-
sentatives from 11 of the state’s 27
state-funded schools from meeting
together to brainstorm a plan.
Some representatives braved up
to a seven-hour commute in blowing
snow over mountain passes, backed-
up traffic on I-25 and Highway 36.
Others simply had to endure a some-
what longer-than-usual bus ride
down Colfax to Auraria. But not all
of the 17 schools who sent an RSVP
decided to face the storm.
“We waited an hour up at Eisen-
hower [tunnel] because of the snow,”
said Ryan Hendershot from Mesa
State College in Grand Junction,
more than five hours away.
Metro board approves building bonds
New construction
financed for 30
years by trustee vote
By Rita Wold
rwold@mscd.edu
Student enrollment will decide
the fate of Metro’s ability to pay off
$60 million in bonds for the con-
struction of the Student Success
Building.
The Board of Trustees approved
the bond resolution at the Nov. 4
meeting, concluding that future ben-
efits outweigh the risks.
Fred Marienthal of Kutak Rock
LLP, presented the bond packet to the
board, detailing the boundaries of
the bond.
The restrictions on the bond in-
clude: Issuing no more than $60 mil-
lion in bonds; paying the total cost
by 2039; an interest rate no higher
than 5.5 percent as well as compen-
sating the bank issuing the bond
no more than 1 percent of the total
bond issued.
The final boundary shifted fur-
ther dealings of the bond from the full
board to Adele Phelan, the board’s
chair, Metro President Stephen Jor-
dan or Natalie Lutes, vice president
of administration and finance.
Michelle Kenney of Fort Lewis
College, located in Durango, Colo.
— more than 300 miles away from
Denver — said their two full cars had
left at 6 a.m. to get to the meeting at
noon. She said they were luckily be-
yond the passes before the snow re-
ally piled up.
The ASC had planned the meet-
ing weeks ahead. The goal was to
elect a task force to spearhead politi-
cal action pressuring Colorado’s poli-
ticians to return funding, or at least
make the cuts fair, to higher educa-
tion.
“When you’re
trying to explain the
connection between
higher education and
the broader economic
stability of the state …
that’s not something
people have an instant
connection to.”
-Student Government
Assembly President
Andrew Bateman
The idea, first put into practice
by the ASC in March 2007, is to
“play” politics the same way other
large interests, such as big oil or state
employees, do, but for students’ inter-
ests.
The bond was voted on by the
student body in the Student Govern-
ment Assembly’s spring general elec-
tion.
3 percent of the student popula-
tion participated in the election and
the bond fee was approved by 53 per-
cent of those voters.
This fall, students made the first
payment, $63 for a full time student.
The bond fee is scheduled to increase
to $145.20 in 2011 and stop at
$237 in 2012, unless students vote
otherwise.
“So you’re not asking only this
year students to pay for a student
center, but rather your asking all the
students for the next 30 years who
will enjoy the benefit,” Mary Wick-
ersham, the state treasury’s director
of initiatives, said. “It makes equity a
cross time period for capital financ-
ing.”
In the resolution, pledges to in-
vestors include 10 percent of tuition
revenues and all revenues from the
student bond fee, operating funds for
research grants and mandatory fees
— in the event Metro fails to keep
any of the 15 promises listed in the
contract that would put the bond in
default.
The legal implications of the
bond highlight the risks of the invest-
ment, which is dependent on student
The ASC posts a person at the
capital throughout Colorado’s yearly
January to May legislative session to
give students a voice.
This year, they agreed, they need
— more than ever — the masses of
students to get involved.
The blizzard that covered Colo-
rado was poorly timed for their plans,
but the meeting couldn’t wait, they
also agreed.
UCD representative Josh Diller (center) listens to Colorado Workers for Innovative New Solutions
(WINS) Field Director Matt Aber-Towns’s speech Nov. 14, at the Tivoli, during a meeting for the As-
sociated Students of Colorado. Photo by Jamie Cotten• jcotten1@mscd.edu
enrollment to cover the debt.
Although the bond fee will ap-
ply to all students, enrollment num-
bers used to estimate revenues the
bond fee will generate overtime, were
based on lower enrollment numbers
of on-campus students in 2008.
“We were extremely conserva-
tive when we made the estimate,”
Lutes explained. “I can’t fathom en-
rollment dropping enough that we
won’t be able to make our debt pay-
ment.”
Lutes said the college expects the
bond fee to generate $5.5 million a
year to cover the debt service.
“Historically, over the last sev-
eral years we have seen an increase
in students of about 1 percent over
the previous year,” Judi Bonacquisti,
Metro’s associate vice president for
enrollment services, said. “This year
we jumped up more than six percent
and a majority of that came from our
continuing students coming back.”
While economic downturns are
credited for encouraging new flocks
of college applicants and prolonging
graduations, Bonacquisti said effects
of economic changes weren’t always
predictable.
“Where we are now is nowhere
close to where we were five years
ago,” she said.
Bonacquisti added that market-
“The cliff,” was the unofficial
subject of the ASC’s meeting.
The cliff, or the 2010 to 2011
state budget when federal stimulus
money runs out, is now a year and a
half away.
State funding, if held at the cur-
rent level, would leave Colorado
higher education with less than half
of the funding it had before the eco-
nomic crisis.
ing strategies and the institution’s
comparatively lower tuition help
to sustain new growth before the
downturn.
Due to limited space availability,
Metro wants to maintain the cur-
rent enrollment level and only allow
growth through student retention,
until the new building is completed.
“I can’t fathom
enrollment dropping
enough that we won’t
be able to make our
debt payment.”
-Natalie Lutes, vice presi-
dent of administration
and finance
“There would be less buildings
on campuses if bonding was not
used,” John Karakoulakis,
director of
legislative affairs at the Colorado de-
partment of higher education, said.
The interest on the bond will be
offset by a 45 percent federal sub-
sidy with the Recovery Zone Facility
Bonds, under the American Recov-
ery and Reinvestment Act.
“The idea was to move municipal
issuers into the taxable market be-
cause there were many more buyers
that would open up the markets for
them,” Mary Wickersham, the state
The ASC agreed it needed to get
working to inform students of the
cuts coming and get them politically
active enough to pressure there state
representative to save education from
falling off the cliff.
The spring marches on the Colo-
rado capitol turned out several hun-
dred (liberally estimated).
Continued on A7
treasurer’s director of initiatives,
said.
The bond is also under the state’s
Intercept Program, which allows
Colorado’s treasury to use its good
credit to help public institutions get
cheaper interest rates by promising
to pay if Metro fails to.
Under the program, a default
would mean the state treasury, af-
ter paying investors, would reduce
a portion of Metro’s state funding,
known as the fee-for-service, which
amounted to more than $70 million
last year.
The program “has been a tre-
mendous cash saver for higher insti-
tutions,” Wickersham said.
The building is now in the de-
sign phase, while a contractor is still
being sought. Construction is an-
ticipated to begin in a year, about a
three-year process, with payments
made overtime.
$52 million of the bond will pay
for the design and construction of
the building and the rest to financing
expenses.
An interest rate will be an-
nounced later in the week of Nov. 15
and debt payment will be made twice
a year.
“We need it,” Lutes said. “There’s
no question that we need it.”