Topeka ? State lawmakers released $15 million for repairs at public universities, but higher education officials said Wednesday that’s not enough to make a dent in the massive amount of needed work.

“We are in a pattern now where we have to put Band-Aids on wounds,” said Eric King, director of facilities for the Kansas Board of Regents.

A 2004 assessment of the six regents universities found a maintenance backlog of $584.5 million worth of projects.

In addition, the cost to fully fund the schools’ annual maintenance is $74 million per year, and the state currently is trying to determine the cost of deferred repairs at Kansas’ 19 community colleges and Washburn University in Topeka.

It’s a problem lawmakers and higher education officials have been studying for several years. The regents proposed a tax increase last legislative session, but that went nowhere in the anti-tax Legislature.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway said he hoped lawmakers would deal with the issue soon.

“The sooner, the better,” Hemenway said. “Frankly every year that you fail to continue to maintain these buildings, you fall further behind.”

KU has more than $160 million of deferred projects at its Lawrence campus and nearly $70 million at KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., according to studies.

The House-Senate Building Construction Committee last week released $4,459,500 for maintenance for the Lawrence campus and $1,534,500 at KU Med for the current fiscal year.

Jim Modig, director of design and construction management at KU, said the task of applying the funds to the large number of projects is daunting.

“It’s kind of frustrating in one regard, and kind of demoralizing in another. It creates a real challenge to do what I call crisis management,” Modig said.

Of KU’s approximately $4.5 million allocation, about $1 million will go toward reconstructing the first floor slab in Wescoe Hall.

The slab is heaving because the shale beneath it is expanding from moisture, Modig said. That is pushing up partitions and ceilings.

“It’s one of the more complex and difficult problems we are going to have to deal with,” Modig said.

There also is $890,000 to repair parts of aging utility tunnels on campus.

Most of the projects funded under the repair appropriation will be put out for bids in the spring and will start next summer, Modig said.