UMS chief urges support for bond

AUGUSTA – University of Maine System trustees made an appeal Wednesday to lawmakers to back the first portion of a nearly $130 million bond request.

UMS Chancellor Terry MacTaggart urged the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee to endorse a $62 million bond to fund improvements to classrooms, laboratories, libraries and technology systemwide.

“The reason for this proposal is largely related to the age and size of our physical plant,” MacTaggart said in a Wednesday news release. “We have more than 650 buildings located across the state. Close to 200 of them were built prior to President [Dwight] Eisenhower’s first term. Several of our classroom and laboratory buildings were constructed prior to the Spanish-American War” in 1898.

UMS makes up 50 percent of all state-owned property and assets, he explained. The total floor space of UMS facilities is 9.6 million square feet.

If approved by legislators and voters, proceeds from the $62 million bond sale would be disbursed over three years to the seven UMS campuses and 11 outreach centers.

The second portion of the requested bond is for $66 million to fund strategic improvements to research and development facilities at the University of Maine and Southern Maine campuses. The money would be used to enhance the ability of the two sites to attract federal research funds and to match federal funds available for lab improvements and other facilities.

During his testimony Wednesday, MacTaggert stressed the importance of the request in addressing Maine’s so-called brain drain, in which young people leave the state to pursue higher education and employment.

“Today’s college-bound high school graduates are consumers,” he stated. “When considering where to spend their tuition dollars, they and their families shop around, looking for the best value for the dollar. If Maine’s universities don’t have the modernized classrooms, labs, libraries and technology that they want and expect, they will be looking elsewhere, and elsewhere generally means out of state.”