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| Peter Larkins | The Appalachian |
| Students board the POP 105 AppalCART Tuesday
afternoon, which services the Highway 105 area of Boone. Public
transportation is an alternative for students, faculty and
staff who do not park on campus. |
Members of the parking and traffic commission
and Faculty Senate are considering alternate plans to curb a sharp
rise in parking fees.
Since last year, parking fees for faculty, staff
and students have risen over 85 percent, to $204.
The parking and traffic commission proposed a
plan last year to have a variable parking fee according to income.
The administration rejected the plan over the
summer.
Parking and traffic commission chair, Emily L.
McDermott, said the commission will probably propose a similar plan
this year.
“I think the proposal was very fair. It’s
the best way to work out the charges for faculty and staff parking
on an individual, fair basis,” McDermott said.
“The goal was for parking permits to be
one-half of 1 percent of a salary. That would mean a housekeeper
who only made $30,000 a year would only pay $150, and when you go
up to vice chancellors and administration, who make over $100,000
a year, they’d be paying $500, and those are the people that
can afford to pay that,” she said.
Jane P. Helm, vice chancellor for business affairs
and an opponent of the proposal, disagreed.
“No other good or service on campus is charged
based around income,” Helm said Tuesday. “You would have
had so many people at the lower end of the scale that a lot of the
money would have come out at the top, where they would probably
have ended up paying more than $500. Someone had to pick up the
slack, so it would have been very high at the top.”
“I don’t agree with the reason that
you shouldn’t do something just because it’s new,”
McDermott said.
“The administrators who rejected our proposal,
they’re the ones who’d be paying $500, and to be very
honest I think it’s rather selfish of the administrators to
reject this proposal because they can’t be thinking about faculty
and staff who can only afford to pay $100-200 for parking, and even
that’s a stretch,” she said.
McDermott said she was not notified when the
proposal was rejected over the summer.
“I was not given any reasons why the proposal
was rejected, no one contacted me over the summer. No one called
me; no one e-mailed me. The way I found out was from talking to
[a friend] about a personal matter and she told me,” McDermott
said.
Faculty Senate has also proposed a plan, based
on placing extra costs into tickets for campus sporting events and
Cultural Affairs events to help pay for parking.
“I don’t support Faculty Senate’s
proposal,” Helm said. “Many of the people who get tickets
for games have already contributed to the university through the
Yosef Club or in other ways, and parking has been a part of the
benefits they get.
“In addition we’re already charging
$5 for parking at the [Rivers Street] parking deck on game days,
so to put parking costs into a ticket, we’re already hitting
people twice,” she said.
“I would agree this proposal was a double
tax if the money members of the Yosef Club were paying went to parking
as well, but it goes mainly for athletic scholarships,” Faculty
Senate Chair Dr. Paul H. Gates said. “What this proposal will
do, through ticket prices, is get the money from people who actually
use the parking.”
Gates said he felt the current system was unfair.
“I think it’s the most unfair of the
alternatives, and it’s extremely burdensome on lower-paid faculty,”
Gates said.
McDermott said she agreed with Faculty Senate’s
proposal as well.
“That’s something I’m in high
support of. I think it’s a way for the university to work with
the community and significantly reduce parking expenses,” McDermott
said. |
