Regents Candidly Talk Procedure, Sports Center, and Land with U. Booster Caucus

Monday, the University Booster Caucus had an informal meeting with three of the University of Alaska Regents, Mary Hughes, Carl Marrs, and Robert Martin.   The video has three segments.

1.  Regent Hughes answers a question from the Caucus:  "Some of our colleagues say that the regents don't really read their packets and are just a rubber stamp for the president of the university.  How would you respond to that?"

2.  Regent Marrs responds to Rep. Pete Petersen's question about the progress of the sports center at UAA.

3.  Regent Marrs responds to a question, and follow up question by Rep. Berta Gardner, on the land grant legislation before the legislature now.

Below the video are some quotes from the video.  This morning I heard a good wrap up on yesterday's resolution of the land grant issues on KTOO, but I can't find the piece on the APRN website.  (I'm sure that's my problem, not theirs.)  Basically, as i recall it through my just waking up haze, they put restrictions on logging and made decisions about which parcels to include and which to exclude.  For those with a particular interest in this, I've posted the audio portion of the Community and Regional Affairs Committee meeting yesterday that discussed this.  It's at the bottom of the post.



Regent Marrs on UAA Sports Center:

"It's on our list, but it's not on the priority list of the short term for the University we're more student oriented toward the learning process than we were toward that type of facility to have state funding."

Regent Marrs on proposals to give land to the University:

"What we've really done is laid off a chunk of DNR's costs to the University and the funds go back to the general fund with really no guarantee of us getting that.  That's not a good deal for the university."


"There are other ways of slicing this cake and making it work."

"The legal side of this on all those pieces of land, especially in Southeast, we're gonna end up with litigation on probably everything that we have."

"I really appreciate the House and Senate have recognized the obligation to grant land to the University, but if we're going to do that  let's do it in a way that the University will benefit out of it and not have the sort of obligation to pay for it and maybe never get anything back."

Rep. Berta Gardner:

"First time I didn't support it because what I thought was going to happen is when the University came to the legislature and asked for funding somebody would say, "We just gave you a bunch of land, why are you asking us for money?"  and that in fact did happen."

"It hands you potentially a bunch of lawsuits and all kinds of agitating from communities that don't want this section logged or developed or whatever.."

Regent Marrs:

"It is a land grant school and was set up that way...I think it's an obligation of the state's, it shouldn't have anything to do with the funding, it's something that was owed."

"We need to find a way to be able to  transfer those lands to the University without creating this additional burden and not having any  guarantee that we'll get anything back out of it if we do something with those lands.  And that's the problem with the bill the way it was written."

"The backbone of Alaska is its land and I think the University deserves part of that backbone to operate in the future.  Those lands may not produce anything for 50 years, but it's there."


Below is the audio portion from the Tuesday, March 9, 2010 of the House COMMUNITY & REGIONAL AFFAIRS which discussed HB 295  UNIVERSITY LAND GRANT