Students Lobby for Alternative

But Chancellor James Moeser maintains that the current proposal is the most feasible in the short term.

After a Student Advisory Committee to the Chancellor meeting Monday, Student Body President Justin Young and Student Body Vice President Rudy Kleysteuber met with Moeser to discuss alternatives to a new parking plan. Under the proposal, which administrators announced March 19, a night parking program would be implemented and daytime permit prices would increase across the board next year. Night parking permits would cost $122 for students and $166 for faculty.

Officials have said the plan would generate $2.1 million to alleviate the Department of Public Safety's projected $2 million budget shortfall.

Young said he and Kleysteuber met with the chancellor Monday to endorse, and perhaps modify, an alternative the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee approved Feb. 20.

TPAC's recommendation suggested that students pay a $5 per semester student night parking fee. Because the deadline for approving student fees has passed, UNC would have had to fund $265,000 next year to quell DPS's budget woes.

Many different alternatives were negotiated Monday, and ultimately, Young said he and Kleysteuber proposed that the University tap into reserve funds to pay for DPS's budget as a short-term solution. By implementing a student fee of about $6 or $7 per semester, Young said he thought those funds could pay back UNC in 2003-04, because the deadline for raising student fees for next year already has passed.

Young said Tuesday he thinks administrators' last-minute budgetary solution compromises student safety. "I think it puts too many students at risk," he said.

But he also said Moeser was receptive to the suggestion that students pay the $122 night parking permit in installments.

Moeser said Tuesday that he is not opposed to establishing a night parking student fee next year but stressed that the University cannot provide reserve funds for DPS this year because of the possibility of future state budget cuts.

Moeser said the parking issue will be revisited next year and that he hopes to have a preliminary long-term plan next fall. He said TPAC's recommendations were not trashed and noted that on-campus resident student parking would not be eliminated, as suggested by the committee last fall. "We did our best to balance all the varying and sometimes conflicting needs," he said.

Young said he is attempting to discuss the issue with trustees before Thursday, but Moeser said he is confident the proposal being brought before the BOT is the most efficient. "The plan that we came up with, we thought, was the fairest plan we could provide."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.