Athletics to receive more money from event parking

DOTS will owe the Athletics Department an extra $53,000 next year, after the two departments revised the way parking revenues from sporting events are divvied up, DOTS Director David Allen said.

Allen said the Department of Transportation Services will recoup that money when they increase fees for meters and vistor parking, which was already planned to take effect next year.

Under the original plan, which has been in place for about five years, DOTS kept all revenue from basketball parking and split the net profits of football parking with Athletics . The new plan, which takes effect July 1, will split both sports' parking fees evenly between the two departments, said Pat Mielke, assistant vice president for student affairs.

Allen said DOTS had no voice in the negotiations, but Mielke, who oversees DOTS, said the process was a three-way conversation between Student Affairs and the two departments.

DOTS will make up for the revenue lost under the new agreement with a portion of the July 1 parking increase, in which parking meters are slated to increase from $1 to $2 per hour and hourly visitor parking fees will increase from $2 to $3.

The remainder of the revenue from the parking hike, which is expected to net DOTS more than $500,000, will be split between the "green" permit program, the "friendly ticket" program, and funding for on-campus Zipcars.

The permit program will receive $18,000 - equivalent to the cost of a 20 percent discount to an expected 220 qualifying fuel-efficient cars.

The bulk of the funding, $374,000, will go to the ticket-forgiveness policy that negates every driver's first ticket for not having a valid permit.

The Zipcar program is slated to receive $60,000 in subsidies from DOTS to reduce costs for students and faculty using the service, which rents out the low-emissions cars for hourly or daily use. A committee to review student fees convened earlier in the semester and recommended the program be cut.

Graduate Student Government President Anu Kothari, who was on the committee, voted for the cut to keep meter costs down, but said she was also against the green permit program.

The committee recommended to keep the permit program, but Kothari thought it was unfair to keep a program she feels benefits mostly faculty and slash one that supports grad students.

"The undergrads said we had to be part of the campus community and work together on the green permits, but why can't we extend that to the Zipcar?" she said.

Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs was on the committee and also voted for the cut.

"My only intention was to bring down the cost of meters," he said. "They're three dollars in New York City, and that's an urban area with a real congestion problem. Two dollars an hour is excessive."

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