In regards to the recent piece, “Buying extra land with money we don’t have,” I appreciate the opinion, but I think there may be a misunderstanding of the process and how it is funded.
CSU Trustees approved this project as part of the Systemwide Revenue Bonds program. That program allows the CSU to sell bonds to obtain funding to purchase the property—that purchase has nothing to do with general funds (neither state funding nor revenue from tuition fees).
So tuition increases and all of the other issues that campuses are dealing with in regards to the massive budget cuts of the past several years are completely independent of this action.
Similarly, revenue generated from the sale of the bonds cannot be used for educational operations of the CSU—i.e., they cannot be used for the purposes for which general fund appropriation and student tuition is used for. Instead these funds are used to meet the operational needs of all of the Systemwide Revenue Bond projects and are pledged directly to the Systemwide Revenue Bond program.
So to sum it up, the availability of revenue through general funds has nothing to do with Systemwide Revenue Bond projects and it’s actually against the Ed Code to use funds from those bond projects for educational operations.
Michael Uhlenkamp
Director of Media Relations, CSU Office of the Chancellor
Loading ...