Parking 2

4/27/2010: Parking pdate:

The ODE follows up their excellent reporting on parking with an angry editorial:

… What’s more, more than a third of the 377 spots in the arena parking structure are reserved for users of the Jaqua Academic Center for Student-Athletes. DPS paying for the arena structure bond in this way is a disservice to those who spent and continue to spend years paying parking fines, buying parking passes and feeding the ever-hungry meters, as little will improve for them. Instead of 514 new parking spaces, the campus community has been relegated to only 242 spaces, which won’t be enough as enrollment continues to increase.

The only thing missing is the info on who approved the decision to put DPS in debt to help fund the arena. Dave Frohnmayer and OUS Chancellor George Pernsteiner.

4/21/2010: Part 2 of Dave Martinez and Alex Tomchak Scott’s Daily Emerald series about parking. Basically, UO students and faculty will be paying about $5 million in higher parking fees and fines to provide convenient underground parking for the athletes at their Jaqua Jock Box, and another $10 million to pay for part dedicated to the arena. But UO athletics is self supporting, right?

Our Uncle drives a tough bargain – or perhaps Frohnmayer just drives a lousy one has his own reserved spot and doesn’t give a shit. Or maybe it was the $150,000 bonus he got from anonymous UO boosters?

If you pay a parking ticket doled out on the University campus, chances are you’ll be helping to pay off debts accrued on the parking structure under construction beneath the Matthew Knight Arena. University officials estimate the 377-spot underground garage will cost about $15 million by the time it is finished, although some have estimated it will cost as much as $18 million. … To repay that bond, the University placed the financial burden on its Department of Public Safety, which administers parking on campus. …

“A lot of people don’t understand why our prices went up as much as they did,” Horner said. “And, well, it’s because we have to balance our budget, and it’s really difficult to do that when you have that kind of financial responsibility.” The price of student parking passes has already been doubled from last year to this year, and Horner said it’s unlikely they will increase again soon. However, the price of faculty parking is set to increase from $300 to $400. ..

DPS had been in the process of fomenting plans for different structures. …
Instead, the University went ahead with plans to build the Knight Arena garage. Because it is underground, Horner said, it will cost three times as much as an above-ground structure would have cost. Of the 377 spots in the new structure, 135 — more than a third — will be reserved for the Jaqua Academic Center for Student-Athletes, meaning they will likely be used exclusively by student-athletes. …

“Dear God, I think I hate it,” said (student) Sen. Demic Tipitino, often a proponent of the University administration, later adding, “I have a problem with me getting a ticket when I’m studying in the library to bail out the athletic department. That’s some shit.

Here is Knight’s contract on this with Frohnmayer: