Education
Gov. Evers tours UWL campus, making new pitch for second Prairie Springs building
Wisconsin’s governor has a good feeling about getting a second new science center built at UW-La Crosse.
Governor Tony Evers has supported construction of the second half of the Prairie Springs science center for several years, in the face of opposition from state lawmakers.
“It’s time,” said the governor during a campus visit on Tuesday. “It’s the number one campus building project in importance, and all of them are important, but it’s number one, and we anticipate we’re going to have good success.”
Evers, along with UWL Chancellor James Beeby and area legislators, visited a classroom in the first Prairie Springs building, along with the Eagle Hall dorm and the Recreational Eagle Center. The governor criticized federal cuts in education programs, and hopes the state will stop putting off the La Crosse building project, budgeted at around $93 million.
“Either we do what’s right for the students here in the state of Wisconsin. I don’t see that happening in Washington, D.C.,” said Evers, the former Wisconsin state school superintendent. “I hope that I’m found wrong on that, but at this point in time, I don’t think they care much for higher education across this country.”
The lawmakers who visited the campus with Evers included Sen. Brad Pfaff and Assembly Reps Jill Billings and Tara Johnson. Both Pfaff and Billings serve on the state building commission, and the university is in Billings’s legislative district. Billings is concerned about the potential cost of the project going up, the longer it stays on the drawing board. “The fact that this building has sat on the shelf for a while, and been turned down a few times now…every time it’s turned down, it gets more expensive,” said Billings. “I think people are cognizant of that. It’s really time to get it across the finish line.”
Billings also says more than 80 per cent of the health science students in the area stay in Wisconsin for 10 years, providing “an excellent work force.” She expects the building commission to discuss Prairie Springs at its next meeting later this month.
