COUNTYWIDE : 2 Colleges to Increase Parking Fees Again

For the second time in as many years, Golden West and Orange Coast colleges are on the verge of charging students more for campus parking, doubling the fee charged a little more than a year ago.

If the Coastline Community College District board adopts the fee hikes, the cost of parking at the college campuses will climb from $15 to $20 each fall or spring semester. The charge for parking during the summer session would increase from $7.50 to $10.

The proposed fees, which would become effective this summer, would be the highest the state allows a community college to charge without special legislative approval.

A year ago, students at both campuses opposed raising the parking fee, which had been $5 during the summer and $10 in the fall and spring. Those fees had been instituted a decade earlier.

This time around, the Associated Students at each college initially protested the additional fee increase but backed away when they learned how the additional revenue would be used. Both student representative groups have since officially endorsed the increased parking charges.

At Golden West College, the extra $166,000 in parking money would enable the campus to hire three additional security officers, improve officer training and make parking lot repairs that have been put off for years. The college’s current parking-fee budget, which may be used only for parking-related services, totals $425,000.

At Orange Coast College, which has a larger enrollment than Golden West, the increases would add $220,000 to its existing parking-fee budget of $860,000.

Officials say Orange Coast would use the extra money to maintain its expanded level of security on the campus. The size of the security force would otherwise drop, because the college this year is spending about $350,000 from its parking account to add 400 parking spaces and improve lighting in its other parking lots, said Ardie Miller, Orange Coast’s supervisor of fiscal affairs.

The main concern among officials at Golden West is that only one security officer is on duty for the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift. Although solo officers who work the shift have never been injured on duty, “there have been some incidents that would tell a prudent individual it would be nice to have some help out there,” said Harry Parmer, the college’s security coordinator.

Golden West now has 28 security officers, and Parmer is interviewing candidates to fill two officer jobs that have been vacant for more than a year. He said the fee increase would enable him to fill those spots and hire an additional officer, enabling him to cover every shift with at least two officers.

“My son is a college student, so I’m no proponent of increasing student fees,” Parmer said. “But it’s one of those necessary evils that we are met with. We have a responsibility to the members of this campus to ensure that the campus is free of fear and the potential of victimization.”

The promise of two officers on every shift was one of the conditions on which the Associated Students agreed to back the fee hikes, student body President Tanya Brown said. The student group has also called for other changes, including improved signs to inform students what they may be ticketed for, she said.

Representatives from Orange Coast’s Associated Students were not available for comment. Students there have long called for improved lighting and complained about the lack of parking since the loss of 1,000 spaces a year ago. So the Associated Students endorsed the hikes as a means of offseting the costs of expanded parking and improved lighting.

The 1,000 spaces were lost when a lease expired between the college and the Orange County Fairgrounds, located across Fairview Road from the campus. The college has since added 350 spaces by reclaiming a lot it had leased to a car dealership and will add another 400 spaces with a lot now under construction.

Because of the toll those costs took on the parking-fee budget, a fee increase is needed to maintain the 50-member security force, Miller said.

During the past two years, Orange Coast has opened a campus security substation in a large parking lot and has increased its staffing by about 50% on most of its shifts, said John Farmer, the college’s security coordinator.