MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Upper Kanawha Valley legislators said they had less than 24 hours to form convincing arguments to keep WVU Tech in Montgomery.
State Sen. Bill Laird, D-Fayette, and Del. Nancy Guthrie, D-Kanawha, were among those who spoke for about an hour at Tuesday’s Board of Governors’ meeting in Morgantown.
The WVU Board of Governors unanimously backed the proposal after hearing public comments Tuesday.
Despite telling the board moving Tech programs to Beckley would “pull the plug” economically on Kanawha County, the board unanimously approved a recommendation from WVU Provost Joyce McConnell to have all Tech programs relocated to the Raleigh County campus by the fall of 2017.
Board members were criticized for making quick decisions without full disclosure publicly.
“Frankly, when the Beckley campus became available, to me, it was like manna from heaven,” said BOG Chairman Tom Flaherty. “This is something the board has taken very, very seriously for a long period of time.”
Flaherty said the board met dozens of times in the 10 months after learning the former Mountain State University would be for sale.
WVU has supplemented the Tech budget with $14 million in recent years and there’s more than $100 million in deferred maintenance on the Montgomery campus, said Flaherty.
Provost McConnell estimated disrepair of facilities would take another $4 to $5 million to be upgraded.
WVU purchased the Beckley property for $8 million in June.
President Gordon Gee insinuated Tuesday if BOG members failed to move Tech programs, WVU would be coming to a financially strapped state legislature for funding.
“In the end, I believe the vast number of delegates and senators will support us because of the fact that we are making a decision. It’s been for too long, in too many ways, that we have not made decisions in the state,” Gee said. “That’s one of the reasons we now have to start making decisions.”
A longtime WVU Tech employee spoke to the BOG saying good campus leaders could raise the money needed to renovate the Tech facilities.
Gee promised only an effort to consider new ideas for the Kanawha County property.
“Hopefully, we’ll find other kinds of uses for that. In many ways, they might be more viable in terms of helping community building than even an institution with students coming in and out of it.”
Beckley’s campus, 45 minutes from Montgomery, is suitable for Tech programs, said the institution’s president.
“It may look smaller, but space wise and classroom wise, it’s quite comparable to WVU Tech in Montgomery,” campus president Carolyn Long told reporters in Morgantown.
WVU administrators predict enrollment at Beckley to go up significantly in the next five years, surpassing the fewer than 1,200 currently taking classes in Montgomery.
Gee said as many as 5,000 students could be enrolled in Beckley by 2020.
WVU Tech athletic teams will be relocated in 2 years.