SUPPORTERS PR AISE JESSUP’S SUCCESSES
Hayes and other regents said they were unhappy that the university didn’t notify them about the overruns, which were first reported in the media.
But Snyder, Ralenkotter and several others say there’s no question that the event, even with the overruns, was a priceless investment for the community.
Ralenkotter said the telecast was viewed by 71.5 million people, and that doesn’t count those who watched online or from overseas. In addition, staff members from TV stations, newspapers and magazines spent days before the event reporting from Las Vegas, which gave the community more exposure.
“When we were finished, a couple of days later I saw Don Snyder and Len, and we all looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do this again,’” Ralenkotter said. “We felt it was such an important thing for Las Vegas to be involved with that if we had the opportunity, we’d do it again.”
Others counter the regents’ complaints by noting that every debate generated cost overruns, mostly related to the need for increased security measures. And thanks to the partnership with the LVCVA, the share of the costs borne by the university were lower than those paid by other schools, such as Washington University in St. Louis ($6 million) and Hofstra ($6.5 million).
“I’m really frustrated that we’re still talking about this,” Snyder said. “Geez, we should be celebrating it, and we should be planning for how we get the next one as opposed to continually (grumbling) over things that don’t deserve to be (grumbled) over.”
Michael Brown, president of Barrick Gold Corp., which helped sponsor the debate, said he also was disappointed to hear the criticism. He had no complaints about the event.
“Coming out of the recession, for Las Vegas to host the last presidential debate — the most important one? I thought it was amazing,” he said. “I kept meeting businesspeople from the East Coast and around the world who had never seen Las Vegas in this way. I think it was a seminal moment for Las Vegas to do this. It put the city in a wonderful light.”
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Hayes and others also have complained about the fundraising effort for the medical school, including that the university didn’t notify the regents before obtaining the matching state funds for the $25 million anonymous donation.
Regent Jason Geddes said that while he didn’t blame Jessup specifically, he was not happy with UNLV’S progress on the school. He said UNLV administrators and donors had been telling the regents since 2012 that if the university were allowed to operate its own medical school — as opposed to a branch of UNR’S medical school — and if the state would approve funding for it, there would be no problem raising private donations for the facility.
But with $64 million raised for a building that would cost $135 million to $250 million depending on the design, he said, he considers progress “relatively slow.”
More recently, Hayes accused UNLV of being secretive about cost estimates for the building, suggesting that the university had not revealed to elected leaders that an original estimate of $100 million had grown to $200 millionormore.
But that’s not the case. In a June 2017 hearing on the matter before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, a legislative staff member said NSHE indicated that “the total construction costs for the new medical building would be potentially anywhere from $100 million to $200 million.”
Jessup’s supporters say complaints like those are off-base and are poisonous to the school’s progress.
They point out that the university set an aggressive timeline to obtain the funding, and they express confidence that the money will come — assuming there’s continuity in leadership.
Instead of carping, the supporters say, the regents should be working with Jessup to help bring the project to fruition.
“Clear the runway for us. Get out of the way!” the anonymous donor said in a comment aimed at the regents. “We not only have to clear the runway ourselves, but you’re standing in the middle of it.”
Snyder said that to the contrary of the criticism, the school’s progress had been “phenomenal.” He’s been involved in several fundraising campaigns, including being chairman of the university’s $537 million Invent the Future drive that ended in 2009, and he said it was remarkable that the university had been able to raise the scholarship funding, obtain the $25 million gift and recruit a strong leadership team so quickly.
“We should be celebrating that and using it as the basis for getting other people to step up as opposed to throwing wet blankets on it,” Snyder said. “And having been involved in virtually every significant conversation involving the school of medicine and its fundraising, I have a really good feel for that campaign. I know it’s going to be successful. My instincts are really good, because they’ve been honed over a significant period of time.
“I know how people talk when they’re going to do something, and I know how people talk when they’re not going to do something. And I know how to help manage people to get from ‘maybe’ to doing things. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Snyder attributed the complaints to a glass-half-empty mentality among some regents “that makes it more difficult to raise money.”
“When you start to ask those pointed types of questions in public meetings, as an experienced businessman and fundraiser, I can tell you it begins to put doubts in people’s minds as to whether everybody’s in the boat pulling on the oars in the same direction. And you don’t want to do that.
“I’m a big believer that success creates success, and momentum in these types of things is really important. So be skeptical, be concerned, be tough, but let’s have a glass-is-half-full mentality when you’re asking those types of questions.”
Jessup took an optimistic view, saying there would be “continued implementation” of the medical school.
“As we graduate this first cohort of students, they work into residencies and then go out into the community as doctors, and as we build the research enterprise around the medical school, that’s going to continue to have a tremendous impact on this community, both economically and socially,” he said.
Gard Jameson, a faculty member in the UNLV philosophy department and a member of the UNLV School of Medicine Community Engagement Board, said he had no complaints about Jessup’s handling of the fundraising.
“He’s doing exactly what a university president should be doing,” he said. ”He’s looking for opportunities, and when some opportunities go away, he looks for new ones. For those who would criticize, their time might be better spent opening doors for him.”
If the medical school were to be knocked off track, there would be profound ramifications. It’s been estimated that the Las Vegas Medical District and the UNLV School of Medicine will have a $3.6 billion economic impact by 2030. It also promises to improve the quality and availability of health care in Southern Nevada, areas that have long been a source of concern.
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Then there’s the stadium. To generate support for tax funding for the project, the Raiders from the outset proposed sharing the stadium with UNLV.
But a shared-use contract that was negotiated by the team and UNLV drew criticism when it went before the regents for approval.
The contract calls for UNLV to pay up to $250,000 per game, which is significantly higher than the $50,000 to $60,000 the university currently pays to play at Sam Boyd Stadium. But Jessup’s supporters point out that the contract is designed so that UNLV would rarely, and possibly never, be on the hook for $250,000 a game.
Steve Hill, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board chairman, told the regents during the meeting that $250,000 was a preliminary figure and didn’t include several factors, including revenue UNLV would collect from sales and advertising at the stadium. In addition, he said, labor costs would be reduced by blocking off seating sections during games that were expected to draw a low turnout.
Hayes said during the meeting that he felt the stadium would hurt UNLV more than help it.
“I hear from UNLV that this (stadium) is going to propel us into a Power 5 conference, but I notice there are 10 teams that play in NFL stadiums and two of them are in Power 5,” he said. “I think this is more likely to sink our athletic program rather than catapult us.”
But the regents approved the contract on an 11-1 vote, with Rick Trachok opposed, leaving UNLV boosters questioning why Hayes voted for the agreement if he thought it was so problematic.
Hayes said that “under the circumstances, (the deal) is as good as we could hope for.”
But others, including Geddes, say they have no problem with the contract.
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The latest criticism against UNLV’S leadership came this month when it was revealed that a dentist in the UNLV School of Dental Medicine had not followed best practices in performing dozens of dental implants. The dentist, Dr. Phillip Devore, reused devices called healing abutments, which were intended for single use. Devore sterilized the devices between uses, but when UNLV was made aware of the situation in September it launched an investigation and sent a memo to staff, faculty and students calling attention to a policy calling for the use of best practices, including using single-use items only once.
Hayes has publicly raised concerns about the timeliness of UNLV’S response and suggested that NSHE had to get to the bottom of the issue.
But UNLV said it had notified NSHE. And when the investigation was completed this month, university officials said, the school notified the 184 patients who had been affected and provided information about how to schedule follow-up examinations.
“The school is offering these examinations, and any necessary dental implant replacement or alternative treatment free of charge during the next three years if failure is due to the reused abutment,” UNLV said in a statement. “Because the healing abutments were sterilized, the school is not aware of any increased risk of the spread of infectious disease. Patients who have received the notification and are concerned about infectious disease may contact the school to arrange a testing plan.”
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During a recent interview, Jessup didn’t address the criticisms, instead keeping his focus on the university’s achievements and progress.
Playing in the Raiders’ stadium will raise the athletic department’s profile, he said, creating the potential for UNLV to move out of the Mountain West Conference and into a top-level league that would offer a larger pot of shared revenue. The university continues to develop the 128-acre Harry Reid Research Park at Sunset Road near Durango Drive, and is making longer-range plans for a 2,085-acre site in North Las Vegas.
“If you look in the five- or 10-year range, you start to see that expansive research park grow, so the footprint of the university throughout the entire valley will become much larger,” he said.
Keeping UNLV moving toward its goals will involve obtaining more space for classroom buildings, more public-private partnerships to fund construction of those facilities, and further enriching the student experience by providing post-graduation career planning, professional development and job placement services.
“We do some of that now, but I think there’s a lot more we can do,” he said.
Asked if his three years on the job had yielded any insights about how UNLV could or should operate differently in order to reach its goals, Jessup said it had become clear that the university would need to continue expanding and broadening its relationships with lawmakers, the Board of Regents, the community and other organizations.
“It’s been a good, positive story so far in external relationships,” he said. “But I think we need to double down and do even more. We’ve got big aspirations, and we’re going to need help doing it from our major partners throughout the state, including the local community, the Legislature and the governor.”