"In competing to attract and create the best and brightest, both the University of Kentucky and Fayette County Public Schools are taking matters into their own hands — or at least asking to be able to — to make facilities conducive to a top-notch education.
"Too many people in this state don't understand that you've got to make investments in order to make progress," UK President Dr. Lee Todd told a crowd at Commerce Lexington's August Good Morning Bluegrass breakfast. "That is what will hold us back from becoming a top 20 institution, if something does. We cannot hire faculty now if we don't have the place to put them in competitive facilities."
Unlike the Fayette County Public Schools, which recently voted for a nickel tax that will cost the owner of a $300,000 an estimated $180 extra per year in property taxes to improve school buildings, UK doesn't have the ability to bond its own construction and must rely on Frankfort's approval before turning dirt.
"We can't bond our own buildings, which is a ridiculous situationWe get 18 percent of our money from the state of Kentucky out of a $2 billion budget, yet they control about everything that we do," Todd said at the breakfast. "So if we really want to go from good to great, we've got to have the citizenry that is willing to make the investment. You're not going to get there by doing what we've already done."
Recently retired president of the Council on Post Secondary Education Tom Layzell agrees with Todd that the state's universities should have the right to bond their own capital projects. Universities currently have that right in most states, including Mississippi and Illinois, where Layzell served in a similar capacity as head of the state's public university systems.
But in an interview for Business Lexington's Sept. 21 issue discussing his tenure, Layzell expressed optimism for UK and the University of Louisville to be granted bonding authority.
"The capital planning and advisory board has expressed some willingness to at least maybe reconsider that issue and study it," he said.
The business community that is pushing to help UK succeed in its effort to achieve top 20 status by 2020 came rallying to FCPS Superintendent Stu Silberman's side the day after the school board approved the nickel tax.
Urban League President P.G. Peeples said he would gladly pay an extra amount annually to help fund the future of Lexington and Kentucky. "We need to make sure our children's ability to learn is not hampered by our ability to provide them with a proper and comfortable learning environment," Peeples said at a press conference announcing business support for the nickel tax. "What is the cost of not doing it is the question. What is the cost to our community if we turn our backs on the needs of our kids and their future?"
Mayor Jim Newberry and Commerce Lexington Chairman Guy Huguelet said Lexington can't necessarily count on the good graces of the legislature or congress to supply the money needed to make Central Kentucky's public education the level it should be, but by joining forces with our neighbors, we may be better heard.
"This is a collaborative effort, and one of the areas that we have not been very good at is we've not been able to go to Frankfort, we've not been able to go to Washington collectively to preach our message and what our needs are," Huguelet said. "Now that we can do that, I think it is going to make our economic development team much more effective in creating corporate headquarters."
The path to corporate headquarters, according to Newberry, leads through public primary and secondary schools, then UK.
"Having more researchers and more research going on here makes it more likely there will be those spin-offs coming off campus to fill the pipeline of new businesses that our community constantly needs in order to have a strong, vibrant, high-tech economy for many years to come," the mayor told those at the Embassy Suites for Good Morning Bluegrass.
But UK's Todd feels there is too much competition coming from fellow state universities that get too much of the pie, considering that UK and the University of Louisville are supposed to be the state's flagship universities.
"This state has the propensity to smear money around to make everybody happy at the level of higher education, so everybody gets one. That's not going to be the way that we're going to make the progress," Todd said.
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