While students in U of T’s downtown campus are debating levy fees for the Varsity athletic centre, Mississauga is following suit by asking students to fork over for the university’s capital projects.

“There’s a need to get things moving,” said University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) Dean of Student Affairs Mark Overton.

With the double cohort looming in the months ahead, today the UTM Centre for Physical Education (CPE) will announce proposed fee increases for construction of its new athletics facilities. CPE plans to discuss those fees at a townhall meeting this Thursday in the UTM gymnasium.

Scheduled for completion in 2005-06, the new facilities will include a main fitness complex complete with Olympic-sized pool, outdoor rink and field house and will make UTM competitive with the private athletics sector.

On the agenda, CPE proposes an increase of $25 a year for three years, in addition to existing athletic fees. After three years, the fee will jump to a possible $150 a year for 22 years.

The $150 student levy will generate an estimated $12 million, while the $25 student levy will generate an estimated $1 million, covering approximately one-third of the estimated $30-40 million project.

“We decided that $150 is the absolute maximum we can ask students to pay,” said UTM Athletic Council President Ian Hazlewood. “For every dollar we put down, downtown [the U of T] will commit fifty cents and Principal McNutt has promised us fifty cents as well, so it’s basically dollar for dollar.”

“That puts us at about $24 million,” said Overton. “Now we’re going to be looking at other methods of raising the additional funds.”

Those “other methods” include approaching private donors. When reminded of the UTM Student Centre fiasco, where private donors failed to come through with the projected funds and finally ideas were nixed from the original concept, CPE Athletic Director Ken Duncliffe said,”Our first priority is the main complex, then the outdoor rink and finally the field house. If we can’t get the money, we’ll go to the field house, and then the outdoor rink. But in terms of chopping down the size of the pool, it’s not going to happen.”

“Now, for outside users, we would ask that they pay something similar to what other facilities are charging, because our facilities will be comparable to that, if not better,” said Duncliffe.

Critics are skeptical of such an elaborate facility, since athletic participation at UTM has been steadily declining.

“It’s not fair to use the current participation rate to determine the usefulness of a new facility,” said Overton. “Once we get adequate facilities comparable to another university of our size, then you will see an increase in participation.”

“The fee is so high because we’re working with a smaller student base,” he added.

That cost will last the lifetime of the mortgage, but, Overton said, “It’s pointless for us to speculate what will happen 25 years from now. I think we should … leave it up to future generations to decide what to do.”