Board gets tough on capital expenditures

When Gov. Rick Scott appointed six new trustees at the State College of Florida last summer, he made a point to say the board, and its peers statewide, should prioritize fiscal prudence.

Point taken.

The SCF board of trustees made a loud statement for fiscal sanity late last month, when it squashed a $40 million project to expand the campus library at the Bradenton-based college. “The project would have been overbuilt,” says board Chairman Carlos Beruff. “We needed to stop and take a breath.”

Beruff, owner and president of Bradenton-based Medallion Homes, says the halt was based on three key reasons, all of which overlap: First, student projections since the project was proposed in 2008 are down, which lessens the need; second, technology changes have made some library services obsolete; and third, the Florida Legislature says large-scale funds for capital projects on college campuses are unlikely this fiscal year.

Still, Beruff says as recently as three years ago, the makeup of the nine-person board wouldn't have taken such a hard stance against a library expansion. Going against college libraries is normally begging for battle.

But the board balked at a project it felt wasn't fiscally sound, echoing the words of Scott. The governor's six recent appointees include Venice businessman C.J. Fishman; Dr. Craig Trigueiro, a Lakewood Ranch physician; and Edward Bailey, finance manager at Sarasota Ford.

The board didn't completely kill the library project. It left open the possibly it could still approve an expansion, only on a smaller scale. “It's not that we don't need a library; we do,” Beruff says. “It's just a question of what the new one will be.”