Ithaca College

I'm not one to normally rant, but if you're going to continue to raise the already ridiculous parking fees, you really should, well, have a place for us to park. I have spent upwards of 15 minutes fighting for a parking spot near my classes in the lots that are never plowed properly which is what I thought all this money was going to. If 2,000 upper-classmen pay for parking, that's $212,000. If 3,000 , it's $318,000. And if 500 of those 3,000 were freshman, you'd be pulling in over $370,000, and for what? Plowing? Pothole maintenance? Please. Add all that to the thousands of $20 tickets you hand out every year (many of which, students get because they're so desperate to get to class on time, they have to park in a blue lot because it's the only place with any spots), and there's certainly enough money for a parking garage. Or quite frankly, a mere sliver of 1 percent of the money raised by the IC capitol campaign would be enough to put in a garage. I know, parking garages don't look pretty, but quite frankly, I'm sick of having nowhere to park in the morning, and always being late to class because of it. Any time I'm late and a professor calls me out on it, my response is, 'give me your blue parking pass and I'll never be late again'. You really want to do something simple and super beneficial for the campus? Build us a small two level garage. That's it. And guess what?! Parking garages don't need to be plowed ;-) I really hope other people see the problem I do. Hope you've enjoyed my one rant of the year. Please do something about this. Now.

As Chris said, this raise in parking fees really seems unfair. The fees are high, and the spots are far and few. Where are these hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking fees going? I can only imagine that they're going to fund the parking services vehicles that drive around all day writing tickets, bringing in more cash. I don't know if a parking garage is the solution, if extended parking lots are needed or what, but something really should be done. Blue lots are never fully occupied, and red lots are seemingly always full. Maybe more spots should be alloted from blue to red.

However, regardless of the current parking situation and cost, what I'm really curious about is this new raise. I realize that this 50% of tuition percentage increase is a policy adopted by the Parking Policy Committee, but what is its actual purpose? Is it really necessary to collect an additional 3 dollars from everybody? It seems like this policy just provides an excuse for the Parking Committee to slowly but surely inflate the already unnecessarily high parking cost, under the blanket of general "tuition increase". Honestly, why does the parking cost increase at a rate proportional to tuition percentage increases? What's the relation between the two? I really would like to know what the cost of a current permit goes towards, why it needs to increase at a seemingly arbitrary proportion every year, and what exactly the Parking Committee plans to spend the additional 3 dollars a person on next year.

Parking fees are ridiculous and it is a mystery as to where the funds are going, but I'm not sure I agree with the statement that there are more blue spaces available then red. With construction displacing many blue parkers, it seems that there are barely enough spots some days. You also have to keep in mind that all professors and blue tag holders live off campus and need to drive to work. Many of the closest red spots are even occupied by students who live on campus for long term parking. I feel it is necessary to increase the capacity in some manner, but adding a new lot will just be somewhere further away (garage?). Don't bame the professors though...many of them arrive late and need to park down near Axiohm too.

There are just so many illogical things about parking at IC, I don't know where to begin.

- we build an expensive new buiding to accomodate the increasing number of students, but fail to take into account that these extra students also add to the need for parking spots
- this new building compounds the problem by eliminating the parking spots where it now stands
- parking permit costs and tuition costs, why exactly are they related?
- Towers club parking? Are you serious?? People eat there?
- Permits aren't checked in red lots. I know people who have parked in them all year without permits and haven't gotten a ticket yet.
- Pot holes in the terrace lot are about 4 feet deep
- Why is there a tennis court (which is covered with snow and thus, un-used 95% of the school year) where a parking lot could be?

Let me try and take these one at a time:

-"we build an expensive new buiding to accomodate the increasing number of students, but fail to take into account that these extra students also add to the need for parking spots"

Actually we don't have a growing number of students. What we have is a growing demand for facilities. We're building an A&E Center not because we have more students, but because more students are participating in sports than ever before and we're attracting more and more exciting speakers and events to campus.

"- this new building compounds the problem by eliminating the parking spots where it now stands"

That's only a short term problem. Additional parking is part of the building plans.

"- parking permit costs and tuition costs, why exactly are they related?"

I'm going to have to defer on this one. I know there is a reason, but I'd rather let someone from the parking office explain

"- Towers club parking? Are you serious?? People eat there?"

Yes! Great food, good prices, and the view is the best in Ithaca. You should try it! (It's also very easy to spot open parking spaces from up there.)


"- Permits aren't checked in red lots. I know people who have parked in them all year without permits and haven't gotten a ticket yet."

Ok, which is it folks? Do they not check permits enough or do they give out too many tickets? If you think parking is tight now, imagine what it would be like if they didn't make sure only people with permits were parking in our lots.

"- Pot holes in the terrace lot are about 4 feet deep"

You live in the Northeast. Pot holes are as much a part of life as lake-effect snow and having to put up with Yankee fans (sorry, couldn't resist). If you compare the condition of our campus roads to those of the surrounding public streets I think you'll see that the College does an outstanding job of maintaining our roads under very tough conditions.

"- Why is there a tennis court (which is covered with snow and thus, un-used 95% of the school year) where a parking lot could be?"

I noticed you didn't ask why there's a football stadium where there could be a parking lot. I'm guessing you felt you had a better shot at out running the tennis team.



Parking is an issue on nearly every campus in the country. If you think IC does a poor job or charges too much I suggest you ask some of your friends at other schools what it's like on their campuses. My guess is the issues are largely the same if not worse.



"When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile."
Bob Edwards

Since you're answering all of our questions,
Here's what I'd really like to know: why choose to respond to the easy "rant" posting and not the real issue?

It's fine to give the standard answers to the standard complaints, but can you really deny us the right to know where our money is going? Avoiding the question doesn't make it go away. IC students AND professors want one thing: a plan. Show us a plan, give us a reason, and then we won't feel like we're being "taken advantage of" or "ripped-off" by this seemingly arbitrary raise in permit costs.

With regard to the pothole situation, it has come to my attention that the surrounding Ithaca community does not have the same funding that Ithaca College does for the upkeep of their roads.

Additionally, I know numerous people at other schools that either have no parking fees or pay very little for their parking (ten dollars for example). Skidmore College and Siena College to name a few. It's important to also point out that these colleges are in much more populated areas and have a much larger student body to accomodate. Why should we have to pay to park at a school that we pay fourty thousand dollars a year to attend, only to frequently be late to these uber expensive classes.

Furthermore, I find the Tower Club to be very inconvenient. The many visitors to this restaurant fill up the elevators making us residents to the East Tower, who pay many thousands a year to live in these poorly insulted rooms, wait even longer to get back to our rooms after excessive amounts of time spent searching for parking.

Just to get the facts correct - Skidmore charges about the same as IC for parking (upperclassmen), charges about the same for tuition, and has less than half as many students. Siena charges about $50 less for parking and also has about half as many students.

Mr. Torello, It seems like you're answering all the questions here that don't actually pertain to the problem at hand. You said that the terrace lot, among other IC roads, are in better condition then the surrounding area. As someone has already stated, they should be in better condition. We have an extremely high amount of funding going towards parking; with that kind of money flowing in we should be able to fix potholes as they occur. Yet we don't. In comparison to the roads in the surrounding community, ours are only marginally better. This shouldn't be the case. Furthermore, this isn't even the main issue at hand.

In an earlier post, you said that you would "defer on this one. I know there is a reason, but I'd rather let someone from the parking office explain". This was in reference to the question about why parking cost is related to tuition cost increase percentage at a rate of 50%. We still don't have an answer to this question. To be honest, I'm very skeptical that there is a logical answer to this question.

Finally, we have the question of the current cost. Right now, this semester, last semester, last year, where is our money going? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking permit fee's, and nothing seems to change. I noticed they did put up 3 new stop signs this semester, but I can say with some confidence this didn't cost $100,000. What is all this money being spent on?

Mr. Shea,

The questions I answered were the questions that Mr. Freeman asked and the ones I felt I had enough knowledge to answer. If what you're inferring by your questions is that the College is taking parking permit money and spending it (or even wasting it) elsewhere, I feel I can say with confidence that parking is not a "profit center" for the College. How much should we be spending on upkeep of our roads and parking lots? I'm not sure. It's not my area of expertise. However, The American Society of Civil Engineers says the U.S. spends about $275 per motorist to maintain our highways. Obviously the College is charging less than that and is still getting, by your account, marginally better results. And, before you point out that comparing our campus roads to Federal highways is apples to oranges - I know, but it's the best information I could find and at least gives us a ballpark to work in.

This is the last I'm going to comment on the subject. Again, it's not my area expertise. I was just trying to clear a few things up.

I can't speak to Ithaca College's actual costs for parking, but I spoke to a friend who is a parking professional at another campus to get a rough estimate of the annual cost per year of a parking space in the Northeast. He had all kinds of stipulations, but the simplest answer he could give me was that maintenance of a single parking space (not including construction or enforcement costs) for one year can be expected to run from $800 - $1,200. He also asserts that parking garage spaces are actually more expensive to maintain than open lots on a per-space basis. As such all parking permits (and prices on his campus for some permits exceed $600 annually) are considered subsidized. Factoring in enforcement is mostly a wash, as well. The ticket “revenue” just about covers the cost of enforcement personnel and equipment.