Parking permit increases coming
Student parking permit prices are going up and fewer permits may be sold in an attempt to solve current parking problems.
The Associated Students of Utah State University Executive Council heard from Lisa Leishman, director of parking and transport services, Tuesday night about a 114 percent increase in Student B parking permits for fall 2005. The rise will take the price of student permits from $35 to $75 and will continue to increase 4 percent each following year.
The price increase will serve two purposes. First, the extra funds will go to the new parking structure being constructed on the west side of campus, Leishman said. The structure will provide more than 600 new parking stalls. However, the new parking structure comes with a $370,000 bond that needs to be paid.
“Parking is a self-supported enterprise meaning that we don’t get anything from tuition dollars,” Leishman said. “We are funded by citations, meters and permits.”
Another hope is that the permit raise will discourage some students from buying permits thus allowing students to park more easily. Leishman said over the past few years’ students have come to the parking department asking that there be a larger gap between an Economy permit, which costs $10, and the Student B permits so that students don’t simply buy a B permit because of its low cost. Even with the rise the permits will still be cheaper than parking permits at other Utah institutions and other peer institutions, Leishman said.
“If you break it down, it’s $10 a month, $2.50 a week and 50 cents a day. That’s cheap,” Leishman said.
Student Advocate Al Lambert also proposed a bill that would put a cap on the amount of B permits sold because the price increase does not necessarily guarantee a decrease in permits bought. Presently on campus there are 1,061 parking spaces for B permit holders and 3,340 B permits were sold last year – more than 300 percent the number of available spaces. Lambert proposed that the number of permits be limited to 250 percent the number of available spaces.
“There are times when there are 12 cars just piled up looking for a parking spot,” Lambert said. “Students call the parking permits ‘hunting’ permits.”
This bill will be voted on next week.
The Executive Council also passed a bill giving $15,000 to the Graduate Student Senate from the Investment and Return fund. The money will go toward helping graduate students attend conferences where they can present papers and more readily launch their careers, Shelley Lindauer, interim associate dean for graduate studies, said. Presently master’s students can apply once a year for $300 in travel costs when some conference registration fees are already $150. Doctorate students can apply twice a year for the same amount.
Graduate Studies Vice President A.J. Rounds originally asked for $30,000, but settled for the lower amount when many members of the council expressed concern that the original request was too much. Rounds said he was recently doing recruitment work in Colorado and was disappointed to tell prospective graduate students that he couldn’t guarantee such funding.
“It’s killing us. We need this funding,” Rounds said.
Rounds also said graduate students provide about one-seventh of all funding on campus and questioned if they get enough back in return.
“ASUSU minimally supports academics, at best, so I’m in support of anything to help students academically,” Heidi Evans academic vice president said.
A bill was also passed allocating $5,000 to the library to purchase a state-of-the-art holoscreen.
-hilaryi@cc.usu.edu