Expansion efforts at Cascadia Community College and the University of Washington, Bothell were dealt a blow late last week when Gov. Gary Locke vetoed funding for design of a freeway overpass to serve the schools, which share the same campus.
While approving $8 million to build a freeway overpass at State Highway 522 to serve the two schools, Locke vetoed a provision that would have appropriated approximately $5 million toward overpass design.
“I’m very disappointed,” said State Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee. “We had fought very hard for this.”
In vetoing the measure, Locke’s statement said he didn’t think the number of students at the two campuses necessitated approving the item.
“We believe this may have been an oversight by the governor,” said Suzanne Ames, Cascadia’s communications director.
The veto could hurt the college’s efforts to enroll more students. An agreement between Cascadia, UWB, and the city of Bothell states the campus cannot enroll more than 3,000 full-time equivalent students without overpass construction.
“We don’t want to negatively impact the neighborhoods next to the campus,” Ames said.
Currently, the two campuses are at 2,631 full-time equivalent students. A full-time equivalent student is defined either as one student who takes 15 credits, which is three five-credit classes, or part-time students whose credit hours add up to 15.
Currently, students, faculty and staff can only access the campus via Beardsley Boulevard. A new overpass at Highway 522 would provide access to the campus from the south.
“(Traffic’s) cyclical,” Ames said. “It backs up for 8 a.m. classes and 5:30 p.m. classes.”
To secure the funding, the colleges and area senators and representatives are working on getting the design funding installed in the supplemental budget, which will be voted on during the next legislative session, which starts in January.
If that happens, the overpass could be in place by 2007. That would still give the schools enough time to reach the enrollment goal of their master plan, which calls for 10,000 full-time equivalent students by 2010.
“If we lose, we would have to wait for the 2006 capital budget to get more funding,” McAuliffe said.
If efforts to get funding in the supplemental budget aren’t successful, enrollment at the campus might have to be severely curtailed.
“The need for higher education is great in the region,” Ames said, “and this limits the state’s ability to do that.”
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