Governor Christie: I've Got My Sharpie With Me

Statement

Governor Christie: There's 176 different projects that will be happening across this state at 46 of our different colleges and universities and the 750 million dollars from the Building Our Future Bond Act is just part of it as President Saatkamp notes there's another 500 million dollars from other bond issues that we're consolidating with that one, we'll be investing just from the state's end, over 1.2 billion dollars in our state colleges and universities over the next number of years. That's a significant investment and Carl pointed out very appropriately, it will help to stabilize tuition and fees for the families who are paying them in this state because without the state's contribution to capital funds, the universities and colleges would have to make those decisions to expand and grow and find the resources to do that and much of the money that would come for that would either come from the type of really naked philanthropic pitch that President Saatkamp made here on the naming of the building. I almost like, thought maybe I wouldn't come up here and make remarks but just kind of lead the auction, you know. See who's going to start here. Let's start the bidding and see who's going to get their name on the side of this baby. Let's just go in and pencil it in right now over there. I've got my Sharpie with me, we can cross that baby out and someone wants that opportunity right here, I'm going to be ready to go. But, I decided that would be below the dignity of the governorship, so I'll leave that to President Saatkamp later. But the fact is if it didn't come from philanthropic dollars, it was going to have to come from the tuitions and fees paid by the students and their families to support paying back the debt that would be incurred at a much higher amount than it will be now because of the contributions of the taxpayers of this state, the investments that they're making in our higher education institutions. We spend a significant amount of money on education in this state but I believe it is an investment in the future of our state.

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