Responding to our post on the bonding process, state Rep. Matt Dean from Stillwater, an architect by trade, sent the following comments. Dean notes that the state does need to spend money on public buildings — and not “cheap ugly-ass buildings that do not work well and fall apart quickly.” It’s not the need, but the process that Dean questions.
What do you want to build? Why? And how do you propose to take care of it? Those are the questions legislators ought to address says Dean, but seldom do. Instead, the state builds new and expands rather than repairs and maintain just what it needs. Dean has a solution.
–Craig Westover
As an architect, I like to see stuff get built. But as a conservative, I hate to see the state waste money. As a conservative architect, I get pissed off when I see the state spend money on cheap ugly-ass buildings that do not work well and fall apart quickly.
The state does need to spend money on public buildings. We also need to spend money to keep them up. Bonding makes the most sense to pay for it. The real questions are: What do you want to build? Why? And how do you propose to take care of it? We have traditionally set our budget at no more than three percent of general revenue. This year, after scolding the GOP for attempting to break the limit in the past (credit card spending) the DFL wants to blow by the limit generally accepted by the bond houses as fiscally prudent to keep our rating.
Staying below the three percent level makes sense to me. That means we really can not spend the $300M-plus. Not even the $250M proposed by the house. Typically when the senate proposes $300M and the house $250M, they usually come together at $550M.
Vitruvius wrote that a building should have “firmness, commodity, and delight.” In other words, it should be durable, it should meet its purpose, and it should be pleasing to look at.
We need to focus on his first part, “firmness.” Where we have fallen down in the past is on the proportion of money we spend to maintain buildings. Why fix a building up when you can build a new one? This trend has given the state more square footage of building space (because we do not tend to sell buildings either) and a sicker stock of poorly maintained buildings.
If they were vacant, I would not be so troubled. Problem is, we keep filling them with more folks who collect money from the government. As we litterally grow government (buildings), I am convinced there is a natural reaction to fill them with government people.
The second area where we can do better is in the area of spending the money. No, I’m serious. We have hundreds of millions of dollars let by the legislature that agencies are sitting on to implement their schemes in the future.
Today I am offering an amendment to the house bonding bill that does two things. First, it cancels a whole bunch of previously bonded projects that the agencies are sitting on (from trails to the theatre-mobile in Mpls. Next, it spends the money on only ugly projects like roof repairs, road installations, flood clean upand roof replacements.
This Guest Post was written by Rep. Matt Dean of Stillwater.
That would be a welcome change if the government would spend only on repairs for the next three years. In my small town we have torn down two perfectly good buildings and built new ones. The “old” buildings were built in the 60’s so have no historical significance and are no longer “energy efficient”. We can afford to do this because there is lots of State Aid to cities to build new, but not much aid to take care of the old. It is the same with our tax laws for private buildings, there is no incentive to repair rather than tear down and build new.
Good Luck,
I worked for the State for a while several years ago in the accounting area and know that it will be next to impossible to get any agency to give up a single dollar. When pressed they will spend the money on something (anything) rather than give it back. They will also have ample justification for their spending.
[...] Update: See “Rep. Matt Dean on Bonding for State Buildings“ [...]
Kudos! We can build well just as easily if we plan for long-term needs with materials that will last, and then take care of things.
I am distressed when I read about the State Dept. of Education requiring local school districts in Greater Minnesota to tear down rather than rehabilitate historic structures because they don’t have a big enough lot for future expansion. Um, hello? Get outside St.Paul much?
Unfortunately, there is no examination of the actual costs for public buildings and how those relate to market costs.
State employees in St. Paul have recently vacated some several hundred thousand square feet of office space costing around $10-12 per square foot (market value, $150 psf) in favor of newly built state offices that cost taxpayers over $300 per square foot. (The landmark IDS building in downtown Minneapolis, for example, a prime piece of office real estate, fetched around $215 per square foot at the same time, and rents out at over well over $20 per square foot net of operation costs.)
[...] Rep. Matt Dean on Bonding for State Buildings [...]