2/28/08

Decision on UW North unlikely this session

by Beckye Randall

State lawmakers appear to be giving up on establishing a north-end campus of the University of Washington in the current session. The ongoing debate about the most suitable location has not been settled and bills calling for appropriation of funds for either of the top two sites have not made it past committee hearings.

The current legislative session ends March 13. The deadline to move bills out of committee and into consideration by the full body was February 19.

The idea of a 4-year university in north Snohomish County is certainly not dead, though. The state’s budget includes $100,000 to pay for the development of an academic plan to serve the students of Snohomish, Skagit and Island counties. That report is due June 2009, which seems to indicate that even temporary classes will not begin as soon as originally anticipated.

Local business and civic leaders who support a Marysville campus see the legislature’s delay as a positive sign. HB 2548, which would have established the Everett location as the college site, did not garner enough support to be brought to a vote.

Meanwhile SB 6352, sponsored by senators Mary Margaret Haugen and Val Stevens, tasks the legislature to reconsider the criteria for selection, giving primary importance to the central location of a university site and its potential for growth. The measure would seem to give the Marysville/Smokey Point acreage a decided edge, even though a specific location is not mentioned.

NBBJ, a Seattle consulting firm that was hired by the state to coordinate the site selection process for a UW branch campus, ranked the top four choices last November. Supporters of the number one and two contenders, a 26-acre site at Everett Station and a 360-acre property in Marysville, have clashed over the report’s findings.

At a town hall meeting in Everett in early October, Marty Brown, the governor’s legislative director, warned avid supporters that divisiveness over location could spell trouble for the campus’ future.

“We need unanimity in the area. If we’re divided, we’re going to have a problem,” Brown told the crowd at the Everett Events Center. He cited the example of a WSU branch campus in the Tri-Cities area that took three years longer than planned to establish due to regional bickering.

Sen. Margarita Prentice (D-Renton) chairs the Ways and Means committee. She has maintained that the campus decision is too big an issue to rush this session, and has suggested that her committee tour the three potential campus locations still under consideration in Everett, northern Marysville and Lake Stevens.