Parking rates
increased without asking
by Noelle Leavitt
The Metropolitan
Auraria students are questioning why they weren’t involved in the
administration’s decision-making process regarding the recent parking
fee increase on campus.
The Auraria Board made the decision to raise parking fees during their
May 19 meeting.
The extra revenue from the parking increase will help fund maintenance
on campus, officials said, but there wasn’t a student representative
present at the meeting.
“Out of courtesy, things that impact students are usually discussed
with a student governing body,” said Robert Haight, former student
representative to the Auraria Board.
Currently, there are no formal rules stating that the Auraria Board has
to go through the students before making decisions about parking fees.
“The Auraria Board has the ability to set parking fees as they
wish,” Haight said.
Haight missed the May 19 board meeting because he was out of town, which
could be the reason students didn’t have an opportunity to voice
their opinion, he said.
“They placed the fees within another topic in the agenda,”
Haight said.
On the May 19 meeting agenda, there wasn’t an approval item that
specifically addressed an increase in parking fees. The parking fee increase
was discussed and approved under the fiscal year 2005 budget idem.
“We’re squeezing back,” said Dean Wolf, executive vice
president for administration at Auraria.
Wolf agreed that students should have had more say on the issue but added
that the Auraria Board had to approve the increase at that meeting when
they were balancing Auraria’s budget.
The campus has gone through three years of financial difficulties due
to state budget cuts in higher education, Wolf said,
“We need $3 to $4 million annually to maintain the status quo of
the buildings,” Wolf said.
The only alternative the board had to raising parking fees was to eliminate
classes, Wolf said.
Wolf also said that typically the Auraria Board informs the students
about what they are doing.
Timing was why students weren’t notified about the parking fee
increase.
“I think the time got caught up in the budget process,” said
Mark Gallagher, director of parking and transportation for AHEC.
Students were in the middle of finals and the state had just given Auraria
its budget for the next year, he added.
Some of the parking rates have gone up 75 cents, and all the parking
lots during the first week of classes were full.
More than 300 students weren’t able to find a parking spot on campus
during the first week of school, Gallagher said. Instead, they parked
in the Pepsi Center parking lot.
“We had an overflow in parking,” he said.
The second week of school has not been as bad, and students have not
had to park at the Pepsi Center, he said.
Construction of a new parking garage is scheduled to begin in September
and should be up and running by Spring, 2005.
The 800-space garage will be located on the north side of the Tivoli
where the tennis courts used to be.
Six new tennis courts will be built on the northeast corner of the athletic
fields.
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