Manoa campus improvements falling short

By Nathan Serota and Brandi Salas

With severe weather hitting the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus on an annual basis, repairing and preventing further weather damage to buildings should be a high priority. Most of those repairs are part of the university's Deferred Maintenance List, a log that lists, prioritizes and estimates costs for all major maintenance projects on the Manoa campus.

As of January 2007, the list contains 169 projects which are estimated to cost around $120 million to complete. However, with State legislation only providing roughly $20 million a year to address these projects, most of the basic improvements must wait several years before becoming "high priority."

Gregg Takayama, Director of Communications for the Chancellor's Office, explains the demoraling effect that this lag has on future maintenance projects. "The list is so long that people haven't even added to it because they don't see a possibility of it being funded anytime soon."

Massive flooding in October 2004 caused over $80 million in damage to the entire campus (much of which was sustained at Hamilton Library) yet repairing projects from that disaster continue to this day. Before that disaster, reroofing for the University's main library was placed on the deferred maintenance list. To this day it has yet to be undertaken. Heavy rains that fell in November 2007 caused further damage to Hamilton's roof, causing $200,000 in damage and forcing librarians and book conservationists to evacuate and close down sections of the library. The cost of reroofing Hamilton is estimated at $250,000, with the project expected to begin in Summer 2008. "Hopefully they can see now that all this loss isn't worth the deferred maintenance to the roof," explained Kyle Hamada a conservation technician for Hamilton Library.

As a result of the maintenance lag, the cost for reroofing has almost doubled and forced the library torely on emergency patchwork for the rest of the winter wet season. "We kind of just cross our fingers and hope that they can get someone down here to do some emergency work," hoped Hamada.

Hamilton Library is not the only example of delayed repairs costing big bucks. Electrical repairs for Edmondson hall were 84th on the list when faulty wiring sparked a fire, which was eventually put out by a busted water pipe, both causing roughly $113,000 in damage and forcing classes to be moved to other buildings. "It's kind of irritating," said marine biology student, Dan Burns, whose classes were held in Edmondson before the fire. "The campus should be in better shape than it is."

UH's administration is aware of this problem and is hoping to address them with more expedience. "There are areas of the campus that have been neglected and it's time that we pay attention to them," commented Takayama. But funding these projects appears to be the main issue, with only a fraction of the money needed to complete them being provided by the State government every year. "The facilities have been badly in need of renovation and they'll be renovated as quickly as we can get the money...it's somehing that has to be done. It's not glamorous but it's basic and it's important to us as staff and to you as students to have these done."