Just $7M available to keep Memorial buildings safe, says provost

Memorial University cut its budget for repairing old and aging buildings at the St. John's campus, putting off repair work as it deals with cuts from the 2015 provincial budget.

Just a few years ago, the auditor general highlighted more than $100-million in repair work that needed to happen on campus, but much of that work is being postponed.

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"There will be a little bit of pain as we go through trying to rebuild this campus," said Noreen Golfman, Memorial provost and vice-president (academic).

According to Golfman, the university has identified $7-million in necessary repairs that need to be done, just to keep the campus running safely.

"If we had our wish granted, we'd have something like $320-million devoted to infrastructure on this campus, because vast areas of the campus, almost all of it, is in dire need of help. We just had a flood last week in the arts building," she said.

"There's always something, and you've got to be ready for it. So in our proposals we had to ensure there was money put aside for our top priorities of infrastructure and deferred maintenance we've just got to."

On the campus, a pedway from the stairway next to the chemistry building that crosses to the engineering building on the other side of Prince Philip Drive will be torn down.

Memorial will instead replace it with a cheaper option, installing a pedway from that staircase to the university centre, where students can then cross to the other side of the busy roadway.

Meanwhile, the work on a brand new, state-of-the-art core sciences building is scheduled to move ahead as plannedand work is already well underway.

According to Golfman, it's cheaper to construct a new science centre than try to do the necessary repairs and upgrades to bring current buildings up to industry standard.

"It's really important to try and keep that on track because that will take our game up considerably, it will honour state-of-the-art research needs and teaching needs we have at this university, so we're still very committed to that," shesaid.

There will be a little bit of pain as we go through trying to rebuild this campus.- Noreen Golfman

"That will solve a lot of plant problems. It won't solve them all, but it will help us with many of our programs and our units."

While the new building is necessary at the university, Golfman said there's a long list of things that need upgrading, but not a lot of money to do thework.

"We've got needs for storing our archives that are very, very vulnerable. We've got the Reid Theatre that's chock-a-block full of asbestos, so which of these arepriorities? That's what we've had to be figuring out," she said

Everything being looked at

Golfman said the university lost a chunk of money toward its administrative costs, and while she hopes the university will be able to avoid any layoffs, no guarantees can be made at this point.

"We're in early days of that. Every unit will be looking really closely at what its needs, what its capacity might be. Every proposal for a position will be looked at very, very carefully. It's going to be a conversation that will roll out over the next few months," she said.

"We've got to find $3.6-million somehow from those envelopes and I will do it, we hope as painlessly as possible I can't promise that at the moment, I just really, really hope so."

In addition, there may be some bigger class sizes in the 2016 fall semester to cut down on those operation costs.

"We might be bundling up some classes to save some economies of scale and figure that out, but again all of this is embryonic days," said Golfman.

A timeline for the work at the university is scheduled to come down sometime in the fall, and if there are further cuts from the province, things may change.

"The bigger picture, we're hopeful we won't be cutting any more in the future, that government will restore our deferred maintenance allowance that gives us some flexibility in keeping things whole and safe."