The University of New England had planned to open northern New England's only dental school next year and educate students to meet a shortage of dentists, particularly in rural areas. Now it's not clear when opening day will be. The issue is money. UNE says it needs another $5 million to build the school. That's why university officials are pinning their hopes on a bond funding request going before a legislative committee this week.

Danielle Ripich is UNE's president. "This money from the bond would make the difference -- it would enable us to actually launch the school," she seays.

The bond proposal includes $5 million for the school, and another $2 million to build dental clinics around the state. UNE students would train at the clinics for six months to a year, allowing them to see more than 60,000 patients annually.

UNE failed to get bond funding in the last legislative session, but Ripich is optimistic that this time, lawmakers will see how dire the need for a dental school is.

"Right now young people are going to emergency rooms for dental care, and it's costing 10 times what it would cost if we had dental care available to them," she says. "So it's really an investment that we think needs to be made for the state."

Federal statistics show that there are parts of Maine where there is just one dentist for every 5,000 people. That compares with the national dentist-to-resident ratio of about 1 to 1,700.

The bond proposal has the support of health care advocates and a bipartisan group of legislators. But it comes at a time when the Legislature is dealing with a budget shortfall.

Bond supporters could not get Gov. John Baldacci to include it in his bond package. David Farmer is his spokesman. "The governor considered the proposal, but at the end of the day he decide the best course of action was to focus on transportation and construction projects that would put people to work this summer," Farmer says.

The bond proposal is also missing an endorsement from the Maine Dental Association. While the state's professional group for dentists supports the idea of a dental school in Maine, it has concerns about using bond money to build one.

"We didn't really feel like taxpayer dollars should be funding a private venture that is going to benefit people outside of Maine," says Dr. Jonathan Shenkin, the group's president. He predicts that most of the dental students would not be from Maine.

"We may have had a different opinion if the University of New England had also tried to get a bond package through Vermont and New Hampshire, where we would have had maybe equal taxpayer dollars supporting this institution that's going to support all of us."

Shenkin also questioned whether a dental school would greatly improve access to dental care in Maine. He says a bigger barrier than access is paying for dental care.

But supporters of the dental program maintain that it will improve access in rural areas, by providing low-cost care through the training clinics. It would also reduce long wait lists and travel times to see dentists.

"And it also places these students in rural communities where they can make connections," says Margaret Gradie, a spokeswoman for the Maine Dental Access Coalition, which is expecting an exodus of retiring dentists -- an estimated 41 percent of them are over 55.

"We think that that will encourage those students to stay there when they get their degrees and become practicing dentists," she says.

UNE has obtained most of the $20 million it needs in start-up costs for the school. But it has otherwise hit a brick wall in terms of fund-raising. "We feel that we've exhausted our opportunities in that area, pretty much," Ripich says. "We've really gone and talked to just about everybody that we can think of, and that's why the state bond is really an important piece for us."

The bond proposal will be heard before the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday. If UNE's request is successful, officials hope to start construction on its Portland campus, and enroll its 40 students by 2012. If the request is denied, Ripich says, UNE would try to make its case for bond funding the next year.