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It will cost more to park on campus next year, but under recommendations made
by Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee (TPAC) those expenses would be
spread more evenly and widely among various groups than ever before.
Toward that end, TPAC decided to recommend generating revenue from an array of
sources, including a night parking program, an increase in the department
transit fee and increases in permit prices. The proposed night parking program
includes a new nighttime parking fee for students (to take effect in fall of
2003), a new parking permit requirement for night workers and nighttime parking
charges to be levied on campus visitors.
Daytime employees with parking permits would be exempt from nighttime parking
charges because their permits cover parking privileges any time of the day.
Revenues generated by a nighttime parking program for nighttime workers would
allow administrators to impose a smaller percentage increase on daytime
employees for their parking permits.
TPAC's recommendations will be forwarded to top campus administrators, who will
formulate final proposals to be sent to the University Board of Trustees for
approval later this month before parking registration. Changes would take
effect Aug. 18.
TPAC was asked to find ways to generate slightly more than $2 million in new
funds needed to implement the transportation and parking changes associated
with the Development Plan in 2002-03. The University's transportation and
parking budget will need to increase from $13.32 million to $15.36 million.
Of the $2 million increase, $500,000 will go to continue subsidizing fare-free
transit for the second half of the year and $600,000 will go to provide transit
services to new park-and-ride lots and cover inflationary increases in transit.
Debt service on new parking lots totaled $365,000, with $140,000 earmarked for
expansion of the student storage lot and $225,000 for a new park-and-ride lot.
Campus construction will result in the loss of parking spaces around campus as
well, which is expected to translate into a loss of about $300,000 in revenues
generated from permit and visitor parking.
TPAC has held meetings since September, and in its final three meetings in
February began the process of trying to forge budget recommendations.
Throughout their deliberations, members debated long and hard over thorny
issues ranging from the practical to the political to the philosophical.
While TPAC members embraced the principle of spreading the costs in an
equitable manner, they struggled when it came time to translate that principle
into hard numbers that added up to the $2 million needed.
"It is very difficult to reach a consensus with a group that is this large and
has members who represent so many divergent opinions," said Bob Knight, TPAC
chair and assistant vice chancellor for finance and administration. "However,
everybody did seem to feel it was important to adhere to the principle of
sharing the burden with the different constituencies."
On Feb. 20, TPAC approved a nighttime parking program that for the first time
would require University employees who work on the campus at night to pay the
same kind of parking permit fee that daytime employees have paid for years.
At the same Feb. 20 meeting, Student Body President Justin Young made the
suggestion to charge all students a parking fee, rather than selling night
permits to students, which the majority of TPAC members eventually embraced.
According to Carolyn Elfland, associate vice chancellor for campus services, a
$5 parking fee per semester should generate the projected $265,000 yearly that
would have been collected by selling night permits to students.
The nighttime parking program tied to visitor charges and employee fees would
generate about $580,000.
The net revenue, after implementation costs are deducted, would be about
$529,000, or roughly one-fourth of the $2 million needed, Elfland said.
And it won't even do that next year, Elfland said, because the filing deadline
to add a new student fee has already passed for the upcoming school year. What
that means is that no student-parking fee can be implemented until fall of
2003, Elfland said.
To help make up for the inability to impose the parking fee on students, TPAC
has asked that the University's Budget Committee make up for the $265,000 the
student fees would have generated. The committee is made up of top-level
administrators who control the allocation of a limited amount of discretionary
funds.
While TPAC members reached consensus on the principle of sharing the burden
across campus, the committee members at their final meeting on Feb. 27 backed
away from attempting to reach agreement on how much each of the various groups
should be asked to pay to reach the $2 million needed.
Faculty Chair Sue Estroff said she felt the charge of some TPAC members was to
represent the views and concerns and interests of their respective constituents
and to express to administrators the outer limits of what various groups should
be asked to pay in additional parking expenses.
But Estroff said she did not feel it was TPAC's job to make the numbers add up
to $2 million and said she was willing to let administrators work out the
numbers.
Instead of voting on specific recommendations, TPAC members chose to cast their
votes along an incremental range of suggested increases.
For each recommendation, a range of percentage amounts or dollar figures was
presented and individual members were asked to vote for one.
For instance, there already is a transit tax levied on all departments at a
rate equal to .052 percent of each department's total payroll. TPAC members
could have voted to keep the rate unchanged, to increase it by half, to double
it or to increase it by 150 percent. A majority, 14, favored doubling the
rate.
In regard to the increase for daytime parking permits, TPAC members split most
of their votes between two options, with 10 members favoring an increase of 20
percent and nine members favoring a 10 percent increase. Four others supported
only a 5 percent increase.
Fees for daytime parking now range from $276 in surface parking lots to $363 in
gated lots and decks, with higher prices for permits with broader parking
privileges, Elfland said. Without the introduction of the new charges to other
users, parking permit fees for daytime employees could have increased by 40
percent, she said.
In regard to the amount of money TPAC expects the University's Budget Committee
to contribute, opinion was again divided. Nine members voted to ask for
$500,000 of recurring money in addition to the one-time contribution of
$265,000 to make up for student-fee revenues.
Eight voted for the Budget Committee to pay "all the rest," which equates to
the amount of money that would be needed to cover the shortfall of other
revenue sources needed to reach the $2 million target.
Elfland said the recommendations give administrators a foundation from which to
work.
"We are just calculating the net amounts we would get from various pieces, and
the decision-makers will mix and match to come up with the total needed," she
said.
In a related development, Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and
administration, announced at the Feb. 22 Faculty Council meeting that she will
be revamping the TPAC committee next year.
For more detailed information, visit the TPAC web site at
www.dps.unc.edu/tp/TPAC/tpacdocs/TPAC.htm
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