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Q&A
Questions about equity and transparency in CUNY's capital budget allocation
1:02:59
·
3 min
Council Member Williams raises concerns about the equity and transparency of CUNY's capital budget allocation process. CUNY officials, including Chancellor Rodríguez and COO Batista, provide detailed explanations of their methods:
- A scientific analysis based on a state of good repair assessment is used to prioritize investments.
- Allocations consider factors such as student numbers, conversations with campus presidents, and input from elected officials.
- The process aims to balance immediate needs with long-term planning across all campuses.
- Officials acknowledge that no campus is ever fully satisfied with their allocations due to limited resources.
- The 'green sheet' represents only a portion of CUNY's advocacy efforts; a more comprehensive capital book is produced annually.
- CUNY emphasizes that their process starts with addressing critical state of good repair issues to keep colleges operational.
Nantasha M. Williams
1:02:59
Okay.
1:03:01
So there is a true assessment though.
1:03:04
It's not just like anecdotal like, oh we want to give money to this school because they said Like do you actually look at investments from previous years, look at the current state of the school because it I think from our vantage point sometimes it seems like arbitrary because for different CUNY campuses that we have in our districts, they also submit various capital projects year after year and then like CUNY, like you, CUNY Central, you then kind of like prioritize certain college campuses, certain projects over other projects, over other schools.
1:03:42
So it doesn't really seem like there's like an equitable process for determining which schools and campuses you think deserve to be further prioritized by your advocacy?
1:03:55
So I'm just trying to understand that.
Félix Matos Rodríguez
1:03:57
So let me let me as someone who was a campus president of two campuses, let me tell you that no campus is ever happy with the allocations they get of capital.
1:04:08
Right?
1:04:09
And I was not when I was president at Queens or at Hostos.
1:04:12
Right?
1:04:13
There's only so many dollars to go around.
1:04:16
And the leadership here of CEO Batista and Mohamed Atala has now done with that set of good repair a much more scientific analysis of where we are in all the different infrastructures so we can say, you need to really invest more here at this point because this boiler system is gonna blow off in a year versus something that might have ten and fifteen years.
1:04:39
So that might provide some of the perceptions of discrepancies.
1:04:45
So we try to allocate the resources in a balanced way based on the number of students in the schools and things of that nature.
1:04:56
So we take that into account.
1:04:58
Conversations with the presidents in the campuses.
1:05:02
And also with some of the elected officials who comment at times support projects.
1:05:07
So we try to do this scientific way.
1:05:10
And while trying to be of service to all our campuses.
Hector Batista
1:05:15
I mean I could just add one thing.
1:05:17
I mean the, just because you don't see it in the green sheet doesn't mean we're not advocating.
1:05:21
Right?
1:05:22
There is a capital book that's put out every year.
1:05:24
In that capital book, we're we're out sort of making sure that and that has the priorities of all the presidents.
1:05:30
Every year, a vice chancellor for facility management meets with the president, the leadership, and talks about the priorities.
1:05:37
And that's how we go into what we're gonna talk to the chancellor about.
1:05:42
But it always starts with the state of good repair.
1:05:44
Right?
1:05:45
What are the kind of systems that we need we need in order to keep that college continually running?
1:05:49
And then it then it gets triaged in sort of different ways.
1:05:52
So that green sheet is just one.
1:05:55
You know, you can't if not that green sheet would be a hundred pages long.
1:05:59
Right?
1:05:59
We we gotta have one that is for us to focus on