Northern Virginia Community College added 10 percent to its already huge student body this year. Whether the school can build new facilities to support its now 65,000-strong population remains in the hands of lawmakers.
NVCC is among the higher education institutions across the state depending on the General Assembly to fund a bevy of construction and renovation projects over the next two years. The spending is the subject of a special session after the House and Senate failed to reconcile proposals that differed by hundreds of millions of dollars before the scheduled March 8 adjournment.
“We had the equivalent of a small university grow at our college this year, and we need facilities for the [student growth] very badly,” said NVCC President Robert Templin Jr., who is looking to the state to fund four major projects at a cost of about $150 million.
Regional population growth coupled with the increasing cost of higher education has made the community college “very attractive,” Templin said. He worries the backlog of projects will grow without enough funding this year.
George Mason University expects to receive its full proposed $130 million, according to university Chief of Staff Tom Hennessey. Especially crucial, he said, are the $8.6 million renovation of the Fine Arts Building and the $5.6 million completion of phase two of the Krasnow Institute, which focuses on neurological research.
“Obviously, there are some we would like to see constructed sooner, there are some we would like to see given more planning money, but we also recognize it’s a process that has to include everybody’s needs and incorporate what everyone requests,” Hennessey said.
The House approved a bond package of about $1.3 billion, and the Senate just over $2 billion, said Robert Vaughn, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. The proposals also include a mix of construction for mental health, government, public safety and parks facilities.
Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, worried the size of the bond packages “is going to be fodder for projects that aren’t really in the category of needed, as opposed to really wanted.”
