City ordinance limits parking availability

The streets of Milledgeville offers even less parking for GC&SU students since the City Council unanimously adopted the Residential Permitted Parking ordinance.

The ordinance, which passed on July 26, went into effect on August 1, but cannot be enforced with tickets until 30 days after the proper signs have been erected.

In the interim time between the last signs posted on September 1 and the end of the 30 days, warnings can be issued to any car parked in these zones. Once tickets can be distributed, the first violation will result in a $50 fine, the second violation a $100 fine and every subsequent violation a $150 fine.

Director of Public Safety for GC&SU and City Councilman Ken Vance said that the new restrictions should have little effect on most students’ everyday live.

“I think that it will be minimal,” Vance said. “Students need to understand that we have 501 spaces being underused and underutilized (on Irwin Street). Now, it is getting more use than it did last year, and everyday it increases by about three or four cars. If that keeps up the whole year, we’ll be in good shape come next spring.”

Some GC&SU staff and students view the new ordinance differently than Vance. Stacey Hurt-Milner, a GC&SU student and Senior Secretary of the Registrar’s Office, said that students and staff should have been given a say in the matter.

“When making a decision like this, you want to get people’s opinions and I don’t know that faculty and staff had the opportunity to say what they wanted,” Hurt-Milner said. “I don’t think they took into consideration what staff would have had to say about parking.”

Students that live off campus in downtown houses will be most directly affected by the ordinance. Houses in which students live will be classified into two groups. One group will consist of houses that are owned by a resident student’s parents.

“What is being talked about and what is being encouraged is that only the owner of the house and a blood relative will have a right to a permit,” Vance said. “What you have is a house that heretofore was a single family house and is now a rooming house. The housing and its parking was not built to handle the extra space. A tenet, outside of the two blood relatives, has to go somewhere else and legitimately park.”

The second group will consist of houses that are leased out to non relatives.

“That person whose name is on the lease will be eligible for a tenant permit,” Vance said. “Now if that person whose name is on the lease has three other people living there, they are actually visitors.”

Vance said that every resident that is issued a parking pass will also be supplied with a number of visitor passes. These passes can be given out only to visitors and will be good for three days.

“I think that we have to be very careful about this visitor permits,” Vance said. “Those permits are only good for a maximum of three days, and there will be a great deal of enforcement of people who try to skirt that issue.”

Vice President for Student Affairs Bruce Harshbarger said that after a period of adjustment, there should be a positive outcome for students and city residents alike.

“Actually I think the long term effect will be very good,” Harshbarger said. “Now it is going to take away a number of on street parking spaces that students may have used before, but something that we have started trying to talk to students about and make sure they understand is that there is a synergy that exists between the downtown community and the campus, and they both benefit a lot from one another. So it is real important that that synergy improve both of them and not one at the others expense.”

Vance said that the ordinance had been in the works for years and really began when construction became an issue on campus.

“It started about four years ago, when (parking problems) started becoming more pronounced,” Vance said. “Some of that had to do with all the construction that was going on. We didn’t have lots to use to the extent that we can this year.”

Because of the lack of student parking, more and more cars began to park on residential streets for long periods of time.

“What really bothered some of the residents in the district is that cars would come and park at a location on a city street on Sunday evening and not move again until Friday evening,” Vance said. “It’s camping. Property rights and residential rights are important here, as they are in any city.”

These complaints prompted Vance to look into the parking ordinances of other cites, particularly Athens, GA. After reviewing his findings, a public meeting was held to discuss the cited options.

“From that public meeting, a subcommittee was put together to look at these things and make recommendations, and this is what we came up with. I will tell you this, the Athens ordinance is a pretty fair model.”

The committee’s proposal was unanimously adopted by the city council and put into effect a few days later.

Hurt-Milner said that a model from Athens would not transfer well to the Milledgeville campus.

“Although I think that his overall idea is good, I think he chose a school with a population that is more vast than ours” Hurt-Milner said. “You can’t put UGA and GC&SU together. It’s like apples and oranges because the population is so different. You can understand the way UGA has theirs set up because everything is so tight there. They have a lot more houses around the campus than we do.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 2 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry