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UO E-clips, May 9
Top stories for May 9, 2008: State changes arena bonds to taxable, boosting UO’s costs by millions, both the Register-Guard and Oregonian report; 14,000-year-old camp studied in Chile, and UO’s Jon Erlandson’s says the findings by Thomas Dillehay are convincing, reports the San Francisco Chronicle
Bond shift boosts UO’s arena cost by millions (Register-Guard): The University of Oregon’s athletic department will have to come up with an extra $2 million a year to pay off the $200 million in state-backed bonds that will finance its new basketball arena, following a decision to make all of the bonds taxable. The decision by the state treasurer’s office is a turnaround from how the arena project originally was envisioned and described to the Legislature and the state Board of Higher Education. The arena plan had called for most of the project to use tax-exempt bonds, which carry a lower interest rate and therefore cost less to repay.
Annual bill for UO arena rises (The Oregonian): The annual cost of the University of Oregon's planned basketball arena just went up $2 million. But that news actually could be good, according to the state treasurer's office. Officials in the office, along with others working on the project, elected to use taxable rather than non-taxable bonds to finance the $200 million arena. That decision will raise the arena's annual debt service to about $17.2 million, including payments for land and a parking structure. But using taxable instead of non-taxable bonds will allow the university more flexibility in marketing and sponsorship deals, and freer use of the $100 million athletic legacy fund pledged by UO alumnus and Nike co-founder Phil Knight.
14,000-year-old camp studied in Chile (San Francisco Chronicle): Southward those First Americans must have come -- all the way from Alaska to South America, generation after generation. And at the end of their migration route 14,000 years ago, they built their wood-framed tents of hide, cooked their food, found medicines in seaweeds, and settled only a few miles from the sea where shellfish of all kinds abounded. … Jon Erlandson, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, specializes in the peopling of America's West Coast and said he finds the Dillehay team's new report highly significant and convincing.