NIU’s buildings are deteriorating faster than maintenance personnel can repair them because of the reduced purchasing power of the physical plant’s budget.

Despite a 5.7 percent increase in building space during the past 10 years, the percentage of maintenance dollars available compared to the total budget has declined, said John Harrod, NIU’s physical plant director.

“We’ve had a reduction in our share of the total money allocated,” Harrod said. “At the same time, we’ve had an increase in space and demand.”

In fiscal year 1987, NIU allocated 5.92 percent of its total operating budget to the physical plant, compared to 8.31 percent in FY78, Harrod said.

“The 2.39 percent difference doesn’t sound like much, but it represents a $2.8 million decrease in available funds,” Harrod said.

NIU physical plant personnel maintain 5.3 million square feet of owned and rented building space, or the equivalent of 118 football fields, Harrod said. The buildings are located on 650 acres.

Of this figure, 2.7 million square feet, including classrooms and offices, are maintained through general revenue funds appropriated from state tax monies and student fees, Harrod said.

The remaining 2.6 million square feet, including the residence halls, the stadium, the field house and the Holmes Student Center, are maintained through revenue bond, or appropriation funds, Harrod said.

The funding crisis involves the state appropriated monies, he said.

“We do not have the same crisis (in revenue bond funding) that we have with the general revenue funds,” Harrod said.

NIU Project Manager Conrad Miller said, “Dollars for maintenance are competing with instructional and research activities. We shouldn’t take away from instruction and research, but we need money to make sure education occurs.

“Money provides material and labor—two things that would resolve this problem (of maintaining campus facilities),” he said.

Replacement costs for NIU’s buildings are estimated at $800 million, Harrod said.

“The state and its taxpayers have an investment in NIU,” Miller said. “We are obligated to maintain these facilities.

“We’re acting as reactors in a crisis-mode and not in a preventative mode,” he said.

Items continually in need of repair include water lines, sewers, heating lines, electrical wiring, streets and sidewalks, Harrod said.

“These are needed to help us function,” Harrod said. “What will happen if the lights go out or the water quits running?”

NIU faces a problem of deteriorating facilities, said James Harder, interim business affairs associate vice president.

“We need to increase the amount of funding dedicated to operating and maintaining the campus facilities, because they’re getting older,” Harder said.

Miller said, “We went through the boom years in the 1960s, and those buildings are now 20 years old and need attention. The older the building becomes, the more work and maintenance that has to be done,” he said.

Reducing the staff by 29 positions during the past 10 years has hindered the maintenance function of the physical plant, Harrod said.

The physical plant has 372 employees, including administrators, engineers, building maintenance employees, custodians, utilities and landscape/grounds personnel, Harrod said.

Professional sources recommend facilities the size of NIU have 436 employees, he said.

Miller said remodeling buildings to accommodate modern educational equipment, such as computers, also detracts from maintenance functions.

“The facilities change to satisfy those educational changes,” Miller said. “Time is spent remodeling buildings. When we’re doing that, we’re not maintaining,” he said.