Pharmacy school building will have to wait

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Hilos College of Pharmacy must continue to wait on a permanent home, after legislators this week failed to include the $38 million needed for the schools building in the final draft of their $23.8 billion budget for the state.

Budget negotiations for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 came to a close on Tuesday evening, well ahead of the Friday deadline.

Administrators, students and a community-based network of supporters of the University of Hawaii at Hilo Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy lobbied heavily this year for the funding to begin construction of a permanent facility to house the relatively new program. The college has operated out of multiple temporary locations and trailer classrooms since its launch in 2007.

Big Island legislators said Friday that much of the debate came down to the need for upkeep outweighing that of new construction, with many legislators hesitant to fund a new campus building for UH-Hilo when the university system is already wrestling with a $461 million maintenance backlog for its current facilities.

I know that $50 million was set aside in the budget for renovations and maintenance, because there was some concern by legislators that there wasnt enough money for maintenance, said state Sen. Gil Kahele, D-Hilo. It made it hard to compete for the small amount of money we do have. A lot of other bills were competing for that small amount.

A review of the final budget agreement reveals that many other UH capital improvement projects will receive funding, despite having been placed lower on the UH Board of Regents priority list, which identified the pharmacy building as the most important specific project.

Among those projects: $38 million for the Advanced Technology Training Center at Honolulu Community College, $19 million for the renovation of Snyder Hall at UH-Manoa, $2 million for the Native Hawaiian Center for Excellence at Leeward Community College, $5.5 million for the North Hawaii Education and Research Center at UH-Hilo, $11.9 million for the Allied Health and STEM Building at UH-West Oahu, and $4.1 million for student housing at UH-Manoa.

Meanwhile, nearly $35 million was appropriated for seven UH system capital improvement projects marked as legislative initiatives projects inserted into the budget negotiations by legislators despite not being highlighted by the UH system as priorities.

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Pharmacy school building will have to wait