San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec




San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

Parking fee to be raised by $6

Parking permits for students, faculty and staff will be increased from $72 a semester to $78 beginning next Fall, and students who do not live in campus residence halls will have to pay an additional $70 to park their cars overnight.

San Diego State University President Stephen Weber approved the parking-fee increase several days after the proposal was forwarded by the Campus Fee Advisory Committee in February, according to Associate Vice President of Financial Affairs Kenneth Perry.

Mandatory fee increases are required to have a student referendum, but parking fees are considered user/optional fees because students are not required to buy a parking permit

The parking-fee proposal was first brought to CFAC by Perry from Business and Financial Affairs, the department that controls the parking facilities and fees. Originally, a fee increase would have applied only to students living in residence halls who wished to park their cars on campus overnight.

“(A patrol) from 3 to 4 in the morning counted over 1,600 cars (in the parking lots),” Perry said. “It became evident it was valuable to park cars overnight.”

Thirteen hundred of the 1,600 cars counted were thought to be owned by students living in the residence halls, Perry said.

The Chair of CFAC, A.S. President Carlos Razo, said he didn’t like “persecuting” only one specific group of students on campus and agreed to a general parking-fee increase.

“Parking supports all students, not just (residence hall students), and $6 isn’t a massive amount,” Razo said.

CFAC then created a subcommittee of students, faculty and staff to develop the fee proposal with the additional overnight charge to off-campus residences. CFAC approved the new proposal.

“(The overnight fee) would alleviate spaces and push students (who live off-campus) elsewhere,” Razo said.

Perry said the committee endorsed the $70 overnight fee based on the fact that the majority of students who park overnight do not move their cars during the day and therefore deprive other students of using those spaces.

The parking-fee increase will also raise the cost of Summer Session permits from $48 to $52, weekly rates from $4.80 to $6 and motorcycle permits by $2.

Razo said the increase in parking fees will build the funds needed to possibly build a sixth structure and operate the proposed Parking Structure V, which would be built on 55th Street where the AzTrack is currently located.

But according to an SDSU Parking Program fax sheet from Perry, the fee increase would generate approximately $240,000 annually “to continue the parking shuttle service” and estimated operating costs for parking, not a sixth structure.

Perry explained that two events triggered the need for the approved parking-fee increase.

The first was the start of the shuttle program last fall that buses students to campus from off-site parking.

“(The shuttles) began on a pilot basis, but it has become very worthwhile to continue,” he said. “The annual cost will be $400,000, and that was never built into the parking fund.”

The wipeout of parking funds reserves (about $5 million) for building Parking Structure V, Perry said.

“The need for an additional parking structure is obvious,” Perry said. “(But a sixth structure is) well beyond the cost of the proposal just approved.”

According to the fax sheet, parking permit rates “would have to be further increased to service the debt for a sixth structure.”

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San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913
Parking fee to be raised by $6