State facilities are deteriorating, like air vents at Capitol. - Salt Lake City, Utah 2/15/98

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State facilities are deteriorating, like air vents at Capitol.

Salt Lake Tribune 2/15/1998

State's Buildings Need Attention -- Is It a Crisis Yet?; State Buildings

Need Attention; Is It a Crisis?

Byline: BY JUDY FAHYS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Some people say the state's need to construct new government buildings

and repair existing ones is approaching an Interstate 15-style crisis.

Skeptics might consider a few building projects that have been put off

for years.

-- At a state-run health clinic, disabled children and their families are

forced to abandon medical appointments because the building temperature

soars to 100 degrees in summer and plummets into the 40s in winter.

-- Inside a busy Utah Highway Patrol field office, prisoners are shackled

to a hallway wall while officers and witnesses fill out

paperwork nearby. The stench of stale beer, marijuana and dirty laundry

wafts from the stuffy evidence room in this 30-year-old building.

-- In front of the Capitol, water seeping through cracks in the grand

staircase has rotted steel cables into rusty grit within the concrete steps.

Proposals to fix these problems have been lost in a growing list of

maintenance and construction state agencies say they need to preserve their

facilities. Based on the analysis of the State Building Board, more than $1

billion would be needed to catch up with all the projects on that list.

Do Utahns face an I-15-style crisis with state buildings?

``We do,'' says Roy Republican Rep. Gerry Adair, co-chairman of the panel

that decides how much the state will spend on capital projects each year.

``We absolutely do.''

``There's a potential for it,'' agrees state budget director Lynne Koga.

Those familiar with the situation point to four factors to explain why

this crunch is happening now: history, money, politics and population.

Growth is what particularly strikes Koga, whose staff prepares the

governor's annual budgets for all state buildings and services.

She notes the state's population doubled to 2 million between 1966 and

1996. For her, the added people who might fill a school or manufacturing

plant suggest a flurry of new budget spreadsheets to account for the added

people -- more roads for those kids to drive when they turn 16, more prisons

to incarcerate the deviants, more buildings to provide more services to

collect more business taxes, and so on.

The state government now owns and maintains some 30 million square feet

of buildings, and requests are pending for more. For Koga, this swelling

inventory of buildings is largely ``government responding to the growth of

society, the population growth, the prison growth.''

Her agency has asked the Legislature to spend nearly $116 million for new

buildings and improvements next year -- about $18.5 million more than the

Legislature's budget-makers requested.

History has contributed to the building backlog in a variety of ways.

For one, many of the state's buildings are old. The Capitol, for

example, shows signs everywhere of 80 years of wear and tear, despite

conscientious maintenance.

More than a dozen panes are lost each year when snow crashes down on the

roof from the copper-topped dome. Other sections of roof are coated with a

sealant that has cracked from the endless cycles of freezing, thawing and

baking. Chips have fallen from the terracotta slabs that form many of the

Capitol's gray outer walls.

Another part of the problem is that modern systems have been patched

together over time. The Capitol is riddled with computers, heating,

ventilation and cooling systems.

Some estimates put the price tag on refurbishing the state Capitol at

$140 million -- about $35 million to $40 million of that simply to gird the

building for a sizable earthquake.

The money problem has plagued the state facilities for years. Among

existing buildings, that means too little maintenance. Budget makers for the

Legislature and the governor have suggested spending $30 million next year

for improvements, about half or a third as much as many policy-makers

believe the state should be spending.

Accumulated over decades, this shortfall adds up to the sort of problems

evident at the children's health-care center and the Highway Patrol office.

Making the Cut: A 1988 report suggested scrapping the children's

health-care center within five years. And the crowded field office, which is

beside a portion of I-15 that is being rebuilt, only recently was bumped up

high enough on the spending priority list to expect funding.

Says Highway Patrol Lt. Brent Munson: ``I've been here 20 years, and it

was small 20 years ago.''

As the list has grown, the projects have gotten more expensive.

``We haven't stepped up to the assets we have,'' says E. Byfield,

director of the Division of Facilities and Construction Management (DFCM).

``What we have is all these Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids on top of

Band-Aids that are accumulating on something that needs major surgery now,''

adds A. McKay, a DFCM architect and project coordinator.

Political realities also have played a role in developing the current

crunch in facilities and maintenance.

Lawmakers, who set the statewide spending plan each year, always are

juggling the needs of different constituencies amid the ebb and flow of

money available to the state.

In the 1980s, they grappled with a depressed economy. In the early '90s,

their challenge simply was to build apace with all the new Utahns. Lately,

they have fussed over the need to rebuild I-15 and other crumbling highways

throughout the state.

A Growing Need: ``I understand,'' says building board chairman Ron

Halverson. ``But I see a growing need [among state buildings] we are not

meeting. At some point, the pressure on our buildings will be greater than

the pressure we feel now with I-15.''

The state has the option of borrowing more to pay for more building and

repairs, but lawmakers traditionally have been squeamish about that sort of

thing. The state now has roughly $962 million in bond debt, about $600

million for the highways and the rest in general obligation bonds.

With its stellar bond rating that qualifies the state for cheap borrowing

rates of about 5 percent, the state could do a lot with the $712 million it

is free to borrow under the constitutional debt limit.

Rep. Ray Short, R-Holladay, understands the resistance to bonding for the

buildings. ``What if we have a downturn [in the economy] after the

Olympics?'' he wonders aloud. ``It's natural to be concerned about it.''

The trend continues this year. The Legislature's budget-makers suggest

$30 million in bonds, as compared to $95 million recommended by the

governor.

Still, Short is among the policy- makers who worry all this

penny-pinching is leading to still higher costs on future repairs. Scanning

the Capitol's granite hallways and glass ceilings, he says: ``We have to put

money into this building. This is an invaluable piece of real estate.''

Adair, co-chairman of the legislative panel that sets capital facilities

spending, compares the state's situation with owning a car.

``If you bought a car and never serviced it -- if you never changed the

oil or got a tuneup -- you would have to buy a new car sooner than if you

had serviced it,'' he says. ``You have to be careful about what you build,

and then you service it.''

Building officials and budget makers have tried to cope by making the

best use of the dollars spent.

Virtual University: Gov. Mike Leavitt has suggested promoting the notion

of a ``Virtual University'' that will allow computer-technology to ease

pressure on higher education facilities, which account for about half of the

square-footage in the state's inventory.

Corrections Director Pete Haun has suggested using more county-jail space

and alternative punishments to ease the 500-person-per-year growth in the

state's prison budget.

Some say more bonding is in order. Others say less building would be

better.

Most agree something needs to be done soon, before the problems get out

of hand.

``The people in charge know there is a problem but they don't have the

political will to do anything about it,'' says House Minority Leader Dave

, whose party has knocked the majority Republicans for not addressing

the state's deteriorating highways sooner. ``My fear is we are going to be

lurching from crisis to crisis for the foreseeable future.''

It's a sentiment shared by those in the majority party.

``In business, you have to think long-term,'' Adair says. ``In state

government, we just hide our mistakes.''