The New York State Assembly Higher Education Committee held a hearing Tuesday looking into where state dollars are going when it comes to colleges and universities.
The clear focus of much of the discussion centered on decarbonization, or lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and how to achieve that while at the same time maintaining aging facilities that have extensive needs.
SUNY officials addressed the challenges of working decarbonization into an already unwieldy maintenance program, one with many buildings and systems that are a half-century old or more.
“We’re taking a more practical solution. We can’t get to the perfect solution right away,” Robert Haelen, senior vice chancellor for capital facilities for SUNY, told lawmakers. “It’s very costly because of the disruption to the infrastructure.”
As they outlined plans to methodically integrate decarbonization into their building and maintenance plan, advocates like Allison Considine, senior campaign and communications manager for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, urged the state to help ease the burden.
“The legislature needs to earmark dedicated funding for building decarbonization at state facilities and campuses,” she said.
Assembly Higher Education Committee chair Pat Fahy backed the need to take action up front as she held her last hearing as committee chair before moving on to the state Senate this upcoming session.
“Those energy investments will pay out,” she said. “When we invest in energy, not only are we helping bring down energy costs, we are saving year over year on operating expenses.”
Republican Assemblymember Scott Gray, however, expressed concern about the cost of decarbonization on top of repairing aging infrastructure.
“If we’re going to redo a building, I can understand, but some of these folks are advocating doing it campuswide,” he said. “That’s on top of these renovations, and that’s on top of these SUNY projects we have to do.”
Considine stressed not underestimating the power of making extra investments when colleges are already redoing buildings.
“If buildings already need to have windows that aren’t leaking, or new roofs or improved heating systems, there’s a chance with a little extra capital funding to make it state of the art technology,” she said.
Also at issue, the state of SUNY upstate, with questions about its facilities as New York rolls out delayed plans for a SUNY Downstate Advisory Board.
“We did an unprecedented investment last year to save downstate, so there’s got to be some equity,” Gray said.
SUNY officials responded to concerns initially raised by Assemblymember Marianne Buttenschon.
“We are in the process of working with upstate to develop that plan and a dollar amount,” Haelen said. “We have to figure out what it is that they need, and then we can figure out a dollar amount.”
Fahy said there was interest in how the legislature can play a role.
“Upstate members were interested in, 'are we paying attention to some of the very serious needs?'” she said.
It comes as Fahy last week celebrated the signing of legislation requiring SUNY and CUNY to develop a plan to enhance internship and experimental learning opportunities by defining approved experiential learning activities and considering the feasibility of implementing an experiential learning degree requirement into their programing.
The goal, she emphasized, is to ensure students are equipped to stay in New York after graduation.
“The more we educate and the more we place them in jobs here, the more they will remain in New York,” she said. “These investments are all aimed at keeping our future workforce here in New York.”