It’s Back to Polls at CSUN : Referendum: Students will get third chance to provide funding for Matador athletics.

Third time a charm, perhaps?

After two losses at the student polls, Cal State Northridge will stage another fee referendum next spring, with money again earmarked for the school’s debt-ridden athletic department.

In a meeting of school athletic administrators and coaches on Friday, Northridge President Blenda J. Wilson threw her support behind a referendum to be held in March, which will mark the third attempt in the past year to underwrite athletics with increased student fees.

Wilson also told the group that she is still reviewing a list of athletic funding scenarios and plans to issue to the public by early next week a short list of options.

All of the scenarios involve budget or program cuts, Athletic Director Bob Hiegert said.

The school’s oft-controversial NCAA Division I-AA football team, which had a budget of $500,000 in 1994, remains under consider for elimination, Hiegert said.

Northridge is facing a budget deficit of approximately $700,000 next year.

After soliciting feedback on the funding proposals, Wilson is expected to select one of the scenarios by mid-January, Hiegert said.

“If it comes to that, we need to give the affected student-athletes time (to find another college at which to play),” Hiegert said.

The referendum will be presented during the Associated Students election March 8-9, Hiegert said. Athletic referendums were shot down twice by student vote in 1994.

Athletics--hampered by declining enrollment, damage associated with the January earthquake and a sluggish economy--must find a new way to skin the same cat.

This time, Hiegert said, plans call for the measure to be presented to students in a detailed either/or format. In past elections, no athletic programs were specifically targeted for elimination if the referendum was voted down.

The end result next spring, should the referendum again fail, will be painfully clear.

“Students will know exactly what is going to happen,” Hiegert said. “It will be along the lines of, ‘Here’s the programs we’ll have if it passes and here’s what you’ll have if it doesn’t.’ ”

In October, a referendum that would have hiked student fees $49 per semester was narrowly defeated in the largest election turnout in school history.

The fee would have generated $2.25 million annually for athletics based on current enrollment levels. A similar proposal was defeated last spring.

Hiegert said it has not been determined what level of funding will be sought from students on the third referendum attempt.

The Cal State University system, of which Northridge is a member, also is facing a possible 10% fee hike next year, driving registration costs to more than $1,000 per semester. Nonetheless, the notion of Referendum III was well-received by coaches.

“I was in favor of another referendum a day after the last one failed,” said Pete Cassidy, the men’s basketball coach.

“A school of 25,000 in a community of millions should have a major athletic program and students should recognize the value of it.”

Wilson also assured the group that despite looming departmental cuts, the school will remain a member of Division I, where it has competed for the past five years.

Said Wilson in a release through a school spokesman: “We are committed to offering a quality NCAA Division I program at whatever funding level we can sustain.”

Northridge coaches have complained that the threat of dropping to Division II, however remote it may have been, has negatively affected their ability to recruit.

“It is a relief,” Hiegert said. “We’re glad it’s been put to bed. (Rival coaches) were using that in a recruiting situation.”

“It’s major news,” said Don Strametz, the track and cross-country coach. “We can move forward. Everybody has lost recruits over the past couple of weeks because of this (uncertainty).”