Winter regulations vex students
Each year, winter regulations for Logan streets aim to keep roads clear for easy snow removal, prohibiting parking on the street from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. from when the first snow fall is predicted through March 1. Sgt. Barry Parslow from the Logan City Police Department said, “We need to have the streets clear of vehicles so that they can properly remove the snow and make the streets safe to drive on.” Keeping the streets clear benefits everyone, Parslow said. “It’s a little difficult finding places to park, and I understand that, but it’s better than the alternative of having your car damaged, although the street department works really hard not to do that, even if you do leave your car there,” he said. “You want your streets clean so they can be safe to drive on, that’s really the biggest thing.” With the regulations in place, students now need to find new places to park, and Parslow said that responsibility is left to the individual apartment complexes. “Parking is a big problem for several USU students, and the winter parking regulations are just making it worse,” said Mandy Booth, an undeclared sophomore.
“When I work until midnight, I already have to park on the street by the credit union, clear down the road from my apartment,” Booth said. “Now that I can’t park on the road, I don’t know what I am going to do.”
Booth said she is a resident of Pine View Apartments, one of several apartment complexes that has a parking problem.
“There are not enough parking spots, and way too many cars,” Booth said.
Sabrina Sorensen, manager of Pine View Apartments, said that apartment complexes are trying to work with students on this parking issue.
“Once the winter comes, since snow plows have to get by, you are allowed to double park,” Sorensen said, “but you have to move your car by 9, and if it isn’t moved by 9 then you get a boot on your car.”
Sorensen suggested parking behind roommates, because the lot does get very full and that way residents avoid getting trapped in by someone they don’t know if they need to get somewhere.
Pine View is one of several apartment complexes to regulate their parking lot with private companies, she said.
Sorensen said, “We go through Cache Valley Parking. We decided to do this because it was a more convenient way to regulate the parking lot. They come 12 times a day to regulate our lot.”
Apartments are not the only places regulating parking through private companies. Logan City contracted Logan Parking Authority in 1999 to regulate parking on streets, said Tanner Morrell, manager of Logan Parking Authority.
Morrell said the city decided to contract his company because the Logan Police Department was “receiving around 200 reports a week regarding parking tickets and they didn’t want to deal with that personally every day.
“Plus it was coming out of tax payers’ money. They were also paying more city employees paid holidays, so this way was a lot easier for them. The way the contract works, they don’t actually pay us anything. Anything above cost is just split between our company and the city. It’s not a big money maker for the city really. The reason they do it this way is just to keep the calls regarding parking primarily for us.”
Morrell said most people don’t know about the regulations just yet, so they are “trying to give warnings for a couple days. We have given warnings through The Herald Journal, through local radio stations, and we also placed an ad on the Aggiemail home page. We are trying to get the word out.”
Parking tickets are $15 and will now be given out to anyone found parking on the road between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., Morrell said.
“Everything we do is for preventative measures,” he said. “It’s like when we give a fire hydrant ticket. It’s not like the building is on fire, but we hope that when it is on fire, we will be able to reach it. It is the same with winter parking. It may not snow that day, but when it does, we want to have the roads clear.”
Mark Nelson, director of public works for Logan City, said, “There has been talk of changing the whole aspect of this regulation.”
The new regulations in May involve the park strips in front of apartments, Nelson said.
Currently, parking is allowed on the park strips, but the city hopes to make this illegal, he said.
“The changes will take place next year, with the new parking restrictions going in this May, and the hope is that by next November we will have that evaluated and a new system in place,” Nelson said.
“I think that changing the parking laws in May would be a great idea,” Booth said. “It would benefit all the students who have cars.”
-lindsay.anderson@aggiemail.usu.edu
Winter parking regulations have started in efforts to keep streets clean and safe. The regulations, which prevent vehicles from parking on the road, are inconvenient for students living in places with small parking lots.