Fire academy's drain on university students under protest

Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, said Friday it's completely unfair that UNR students will still be paying on the Carlin Fire Academy bonds long after the university transfers ownership to the Nevada National Guard.

Gov. Jim Gibbons proposed getting the ongoing cost of the academy off UNR's books by having the guard convert it to a training center. Gibbons' legislative director Jodi Stevens told a Senate Finance/Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee Friday the National Guard Bureau is looking at Carlin as a potential regional interagency center.

Goicoechea agreed that might be an excellent use for the center west of Elko.

However, he said that won't relieve the university of the more than $27 million in bond debt owed on the fire academy.

"At some point, UNR will be out of the fire academy business and still have the debt," he said. "How are we going to make the university of Nevada whole? $6.50 a credit is being paid by students at UNR (for the bond) and they will have to continue paying that for a facility not available to them."

He said the state will have to cover that debt.

"The state is going to have to step up to the plate and relieve that $27 million in bonding."

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, agreed it's not fair because the students don't get anything for that hefty per-credit charge.

"UNR students are still paying $6.50 a credit for nothing," she said.

She said after the meeting that if students are paying that kind of fee, they should be getting benefits, not paying for a mistake by a previous UNR administration.

The academy was created as a potential money maker designed to draw fire crews from around the West for classes and field training exercises.

But it has been a money loser since it opened and, rather than paying down the debt, the amount owed has been increasing because revenues don't cover operating costs.

In a letter to Gibbons, Major General Kelly McKeague said that center could provide training for National Guard Reaction Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction teams and other forces including local first responders.

That letter also suggests an additional option for Carlin would be to establish Nevada's Youth Challenge Academy there. The challenge program takes juveniles who are in danger of falling into the juvenile justice system and puts them in a regimented environment. Supporters, including Gov. Gibbons, have touted it as a way of turning those youngsters' lives around. The guard likes the program as a recruiting tool.

McKeague's letter says there is legislation in Congress that would provide full federal funding for the first two years of the program and that the federal government would cover three-quarters of costs each year thereafter.

He urged the state to form a task force to evaluate Carlin's potential for those uses.