Despite our voices warning the County Board to proceed 
with extreme caution on the sale of the county grounds, lest serious mistakes be made, the Board only saw the dollar signs and ignored our repeated warnings.
Now we see, as I’ve been saying all along, UW is running out money to even do the most needed maintenance work:
Miller estimated UW System maintenance needs easily top $1 billion.
The state maintenance budget, Miller said, never will match the need, but the system needs to keep spending on new projects. Some of those projects are replacements for buildings with maintenance issues, he said, but there is no inclination to shift money from new construction to fixing what’s there.
The system has a record $222.4 million worth of projects committed for the 2011-13 budget.
The dilemma of building new or performing maintenance work is constant, said Jeffrey Bartell, chairman of the Board of Regents’ Capital Planning and Budget Committee.
“One of the first questions we ask before deciding to build new is whether we can make do with what we have,” he said.
Chancellor Santiago, members of the County Board, are you listening?