A policy calling for all University employees to be ticketed for parking in the patient and visitor section of the Health Affairs parking deck has been modified following input from employees.
The revised policy, which was discussed at the March 6 meeting of the Employee Forum, should make it easier for employees with valid reasons to park in the deck to have their tickets voided.
The forum's Personnel Policies Committee will review the changes to see if they address employees' concerns.
The ticketing policy, which went into effect in January, was aimed at making sure the deck was available for hospital and dental patients and visitors, said Deborah Hawkins, DTP's parking control manager. The department sought to keep employees who worked in nearby buildings from using the deck instead of their assigned lot.
Two employees told the forum the blanket policy had penalized employees who had good reasons to be at the hospital.
Kay Wijnberg (law) said a co-worker was ticketed while performing volunteer work at the hospital. Another employee was cited while visiting her father in the hospital after he had a heart attack.
While it's unfair to patients and visitors when employees park illegally in the deck, employees with legitimate reasons to park there should not be penalized, Wijnberg said.
Paula Schubert (continuing education/health sciences) said it would be disconcerting to an employee who is visiting the hospital for a medical emergency to find a ticket on his or her car.
"I think there are some issues like this that we need to deal with a little more common sense, a little more courtesy, and a little more compassion," she said.
Deck often full
Hawkins said the policy came about after hospital administrators asked her department to examine the situation because the deck was often full.
Studies showed that on some days as many as 500 people were turned away from the deck because it was full, Hawkins said. Hospital patients and visitors were having to be shuttled from Smith Center lots, she said.
"We have a very sticky situation that we find ourselves in, primarily because we don't have enough parking," she said.
It wasn't until after tickets were issued that the department learned many employees had valid reasons to be parking in the patient and visitor section, Hawkins said.
"We did not know how big of an issue we were going to create when we tried to fix one problem," she said.
According to the revised transportation and parking policy, employees with legitimate reasons to park in the patient and visitor section of the Health Affairs deck should take the following steps:
* Display an appointment slip on the dash.
* If an employee receives a ticket, he or she may present their receipt or appointment slip with the ticket to the pay attendant at the deck exit and the ticket will be voided.
* If an employee receives a ticket while visiting a patient, the employee should tell the exit attendant the patient's name and room number and if the information can be verified, the ticket will be voided.
* If the patient information cannot be provided at the time of exit, an appeal may be made within 10 days, provided verifiable information concerning an appointment or patient visit is provided with the appeal.
Hawkins said the voiding of tickets would not affect an employee's status regarding appeals of any other tickets.
Sending a thank-you note
The forum also approved a resolution thanking the UNC system's Board of Governors for its strong support of higher staff salaries and pledging employees' help in efforts to improve the university.
The board, at a work session last month, reviewed a draft agenda for the upcoming "short session" of the General Assembly. In it, the board stated its support for better salaries for staff members. At the work session, Chair Sam Neill mentioned the need for improvement in staff salaries.
Former Employee Forum Chair Margaret Balcom said the language represented an encouraging break from the past.
Because the board is limited by law to submitting budget requests regarding only faculty and EPA nonfaculty members, it hadn't before included any language concerning SPA employees, she said.
A 1994 Employee Forum resolution had asked the board to include language offering general support for better SPA employee salaries.
Housekeepers' mail
The forum also discussed concerns that mail was not reaching housekeepers in a timely manner.
Tommy Brickhouse, manager of mail services, told the forum the housekeeping department now has its own campus box number--CB# 1850, which has eliminated one step in the distribution process.
Previously, Brickhouse said, housekeepers' mail was sent to Physical Plant's campus box at the Giles F. Horney Building for sorting. Then it was taken by a Physical Plant courier to a housekeeping administrative office in Hamilton Hall, he said.
But forum delegate Betty Watkins, a housekeeping supervisor, said the change hadn't helped much. Mail consistently is a couple of days old before it reaches housekeepers, she said.
Watkins said once housekeepers' mail reached the Hamilton Hall box, it still had to be picked up by housekeeping supervisors and be delivered to individual housekeepers' boxes at their workplaces.
Brickhouse said the arrangement was similar to those in other units. Campus mail typically is delivered to one location in a building with units responsible for internal distribution, he said. The delay in housekeepers' mail may be in the internal distribution, a matter in which he usually does not get involved, Brickhouse said.
In a separate interview with the Gazette, Ed Phillips, associate director of Physical Plant, said plans called for a courier to be hired to deliver housekeepers' mail to their workplaces.
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