OLYMPIA — A team of influential Snohomish County leaders launched an aggressive effort Feb. 9 to win legislative support and start-up money for a four-year university in the county.
They told a state Senate panel that it is needed to serve a growing number of high school graduates who pass on college because they encounter enrollment caps and high costs, and the nearest university campus is too far away to offset those challenges.
“This is really about the students and trying to meet their needs,” Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson said.
“If not now, when?” asked state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, who has proposed the bill that is the vehicle for the first new four-year college in the state since The Evergreen State College opened in 1971.
“Will we build it this biennium? No,” Haugen said. “I’m not leaving this place without a commitment for a college. It’s more important than Boeing. It’s about the future of young kids in our state.”
Haugen, Stephanson, Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Everett resident and Washington State University regent Connie Niva spoke to the Senate’s education panel headed by Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell. No action was taken on the bill.
Senate Bill 5425 does not identify a location or spell out the cost to build and operate a college.
But an initial economic analysis from the Office of Financial Management estimates a cost of $60 million over six years to construct a college for 950 undergraduates and 50 graduate students. This assumes selecting a site by June 2008, finishing design within two years and opening by July 2011.
Reardon said he has been out looking for a possible site and suggested lawmakers could provide some initial money by tapping the state’s cache of education bond dollars.
Political hurdles exist. The state Higher Education Coordinating Board is recommending that money be spent to convert the two-year branch campuses run by the University of Washington in Tacoma and WSU in Vancouver, Wash., to four-year schools; Vancouver in 2006 and Tacoma in 2007.
Gov. Christine Gregoire said last week that she backs that recommendation, and added that now is not the time to spend money on a new four-year university.
“I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to the governor,” Haugen said. “I would remind her that we are the policy-makers.”
Niva said WSU would not oppose a new college, though its leaders won’t shed any of their requests, either.
“The Legislature has got big-time problems funding higher education,” Niva said. “I don’t envy their job.”
Jerry Cornfield writes for The Herald in Everett.
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