By Mónica Torres
Interim President, New Mexico State University system
Election Day is less than three weeks away, and many voters are already casting their ballots. On the backs of those ballots is an opportunity to invest nearly $230 million in New Mexico’s public higher education institutions – including the New Mexico State University system – without raising property tax rates.
Support for General Obligation Bond 3 for Higher Education would bring more than $50.5 million to NMSU’s campuses throughout New Mexico, including $20 million for steam tunnel and electrical infrastructure upgrades on our Las Cruces campus and $15 million for Agricultural Experiment Station science and research centers across the state. NMSU-Alamogordo, NMSU-Grants and Doña Ana Community College would also receive funding for campus-wide infrastructure improvements and renovations.
NMSU’s Agricultural Experiment Station is the principal research unit of our College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. The AES system supports research to benefit the people of New Mexico in the economic, social, and cultural aspects of agriculture, natural resource management, and family issues.
I recently had the opportunity to visit our research centers in Clayton, Clovis, Tucumcari, and Alcalde. I got to see firsthand how great the need is to update our research infrastructure there. I also heard from lawmakers who represent those communities and producers who benefit from the research and outreach we’re doing – these centers provide tremendous value to the people they serve. Support for GO Bond 3 would be an investment in the future of New Mexico’s ag industry.
On our Las Cruces campus, we’ve requested $20 million for steam tunnel and electrical infrastructure upgrades. This project would replace aging and deficient steam distribution infrastructure, improve our utility reliability, increase our energy efficiency, and reduce operations and maintenance costs campuswide. It will also improve the indoor air quality at our facilities, increasing student, faculty and staff comfort and protecting our research endeavors.
All of these projects, including those at our community college campuses throughout the state, represent an opportunity to extend the usable life of the facilities that taxpayers have already invested in over the years. We’re prioritizing taking care of what we already have so we can continue to fulfill our mission as a land-grant institution to serve the people of New Mexico.
While we may be rivals on the football field and compete for federal research dollars with other higher ed institutions in our state, election season is a time when our NMSU system and our colleagues at University of New Mexico and every other public institution in our state are on the same team, working toward the same goal: Getting the word out to voters about what’s at stake when they consider this bond question.
This is an opportunity to invest, not only in NMSU’s mission, but in impactful projects and missions statewide. UNM with funding for projects including a new Humanities & Social Sciences Complex on the main campus and a College of Pharmacy renovation for the UNM Health Sciences Center on the north campus. Other projects included in this GO Bond question will benefit Navajo Technical University, Southeast New Mexico College, and just about every other campus around the state.
It's also an opportunity to invest in job creation. Passage of GO Bond 3 would create more than 2,300 new jobs in architecture, construction, education and related fields, and will contribute to the economies of 29 cities in 23 counties across New Mexico. The economic impact of GO Bond 3 is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.
Voters in New Mexico have historically supported bond funding for higher education, and recent funding for the NMSU system has allowed us to build new state-of-the art agriculture facilities, upgrade our nursing education technology, and help shape New Mexico’s workforce – all without raising the tax rate. We’re grateful to the voters of our state for making that possible.
Support for GO Bond 3 is an investment in New Mexico’s future. For more information, visit gobond.nmsu.edu and www.investinbond3.com.
Mónica Torres is interim president of the New Mexico State University system.