Parking fees may climb

Students in the Coast Community College District may pay more to park on campus this fall, as the district announced plans to boost fees to help its underfunded safety departments.

The parking increase, if implemented, would affect students at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and Golden West College in Huntington Beach. According to Rich Pagel, OCC’s vice president of administrative services, the district will likely send the matter before the board of trustees in April.

Students pay $20 a semester during the fall and spring for campus parking passes, and the change would boost the fee to $30. During the summer, permits would increase to $15 from $10.

John Farmer, OCC’s public safety chief, said the extra money would help to make ends meet for his self-funded department and also allow for the hiring of more officers. In recent years, he said, the safety department had had to cut personnel and hours and borrow money from the general fund, as income from permits and parking meters didn’t suffice.

“We’ve been over budget now for the last couple years, and cutting staff really isn’t an option,” Farmer said. “You need personnel out there.”

So far this year, according to Pagel, the safety department has run up a deficit of around $160,000. The department has rolled back office and patrol hours in recent years and reduced the number of student assistants who help officers patrol the campus. Farmer said with his force stretched thinner and thinner, it would be hard to make additional cuts.

“We’re responding to anything that a police department in a town of 25,000 would be responding to,” he said.

The district, which hasn’t raised its fees for parking permits since 1992, would likely implement the new costs this fall if the district approves them.

Farmer said OCC typically sells around 18,000 student parking permits each spring and fall semester.

The OCC student government has endorsed the fee increase, and President Lynne Riddle, who serves on the campus safety committee, said strengthening the force was worth the extra cost.

“If there’s a medical emergency, the first responders are really our people here on campus,” she said. “We don’t want those people to be understaffed.”

She added that with the price going up only $10 a semester, she didn’t expect permit sales to drop significantly. “I see a lot of people with tall cups of coffee every morning,” Riddle said. “The $3 cup.”