UTEP President Dissatisfied With City’s Relationship With University

After speaking at the 2011 Fall Convocation, UTEP President Diana Natalicio spoke candidly with ABC-7 about the way she sees the university’s relationship with the city of El Paso.

“We’re very concerned,” Natalicio said on Tuesday. “That’s an issue we’re going to be working on, we really do need support locally. Other cities and other regions are making major commitments to their institutions to try to encourage their momentum (toward becoming Tier 1 research universities).”

Natalicio said the city missed a chance to provide direct funding for UTEP through the franchise fee fund, or “impact” fund, which is made up of money El Paso Electric pays the city for letting the utility be the power provider. Those dollars are earmarked for initiatives to stimulate economic growth in El Paso.

Ernesto Gamboa, with the city’s Economic Development Department, said the fund is expected to grow but currently amounts to an estimated $4 million to $4.5 million annually.

On June 14, the City Council decided how the money would be used from now on. Seventy-five percent of the money will go to the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation, while the remaining 25 percent will go to projects that support entrepreneurship. City Council must sign off on every project before it receives funding.

When asked if UTEP could still apply for some of those funds, Gamboa said, “Absolutely.”

“They can develop a project and come to MCA or one of our other partners,” he said, adding that he would not want UTEP to feel snubbed by City Council’s decision. “I would certainly hope that that’s not the perception that’s being projected by the city. We try very hard to engage UTEP. UTEP is obviously a huge economic engine; they’re a vital player.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Natalicio said she still would have liked for the city to reach out to UTEP earlier so they could collaborate more closely on how those franchise fee funds could have been used.

Gamboa said UTEP was involved in the process and said the university is reaping some of the benefits from the fund allocation. Part of the money is going to the Hub of Human Innovation incubator project downtown, which the university is affiliated with.

Natalicio pointed out that other cities with similar franchise fee funds have made more direct contributions to their own local universities. She said San Antonio’s city council recently approved an allocation of $50 million over 10 years for the University of Texas at San Antonio out of its own version of the franchise fee fund.