Magnolia Park shuttle dispute comes to a head

    The shuttle conflict between GCSU and Magnolia Park came to a climax Tuesday, Sept. 19, when GCSU Auxiliary Services held an open forum in Peabody Auditorium to fully explain the situation to students.
    “They (Magnolia Park) made promises to their residents that they would provide shuttle services; they made that same promise to city officials here in Milledgeville when they came up with the development plan,” said Kyle Cullars, director of GCSU Auxiliary Services. “At no point did anybody understand that to mean that they would run a 15-passenger van back and forth across the bypass to Bobcat Village.”
    Last week, Auxiliary Services released a letter that explained the situation. According to the letter, the dispute started in the Spring of 2006 when Magnolia Park advertised it would provide a shuttle service for its residents.
    “We, Georgia College, made several attempts to coordinate with them to make sure that, whatever, their shuttle plans worked well in conjunction with our own shuttle plan,” Cullars said.
    An offer was made to Magnolia Park that they would be given two free spots on the main block of campus, one stop on Montgomery Street and one stop on Wilkinson Street, that would serve as the drop-off spot for Magnolia Park shuttles.
    Mike Haun, marketing manager of Auxiliary Services, explained “free spots.”
    “By free spot,” Haun said. “We mean an area where they don’t have to compete with the Bobcat shuttle.”   Melissa Olsen, property manager of Magnolia Park, said that they never received that offer.
    “While we were leasing up,” Olsen said, “the bus drivers and the people who work for GCSU told our future residents we would never be able to have a shuttle because we weren’t allowed to have a shuttle.”
    Magnolia Park did not make contact with Auxiliary Services about its plan for shuttle services until two days before the start of the this semester, according to Cullars.
    Olsen said Magnolia Park offered $44,000 for the Auxiliary Services to add a Magnolia Park stop to the Bobcat shuttle route. That offer was declined.
    Cullars said that the estimated cost of adding a stop at Magnolia Park is $92,000. That is enough money to add one bus to the Bobcat fleet, a driver to pilot that bus and pay for the bus’s maintenance.  It costs $306,000 to operate the entire GCSU shuttle service. The shuttles that run to Bobcat Village generate 42 percent of that money.
    Every student at GCSU pays parking and transportation fees that amount to $37 every semester, but only $10 goes to the shuttle program. Olsen said that the $10 entitles every student, including those who live off campus, to ride the shuttle to class.
    “There is no reason for us to provide a duplicate service when the students are paying for that service,” she said. “We have every intention, and do, provide a shuttle service for the residents.”
    That shuttle service is a van that drives students from Magnolia Park to the Bobcat Village shuttle stop across the four-lane 441 bypass.
    Some Magnolia Park residents don’t feel like they are getting what they were promised.
    “It infuriates me,” said Addie Andrews, a junior art major living at Magnolia Park. “I don’t live at Magnolia Park, which is supposed to be one of the nicest places in Milledgeville to live, to get shuttled over to Bobcat. We were promised a private shuttle, not a shuttle that will take us to another shuttle that will take us to class.”
    The students at Bobcat Village also have complaints about Magnolia Parks’ use of the shuttle system.
    “I understand that (Magnolia Park residents) are students also, and they have to get to class just as I do,” said Eric Sanderson, a senior outdoor education major living at Bobcat Village. “Part of that money we pay to live at Bobcat goes to the shuttle.”
    Cullars said that there are three offers on the table for Magnolia Park. The first is still the free spots on campus to drop off students. The second is paying the full price for the Bobcat shuttle to stop at Magnolia Park. Finally, the third is continuing to drop students off at Bobcat Village, but Magnolia Park must pay a fee (anywhere between $1 and $92,000).
    “I hope they’ll see that it is very reasonable for us to expect them to pay for the service that, right now, they are getting for free,” Cullars said.
    Olsen said she sees the shuttle conflict as a way for Auxiliary Services to attack Magnolia Park.
    “The bottom line is Bobcat (Village) not being able to lease up their property,” Olsen said.  “We have a phenomenal product, and they really can’t compete.  The issue is the fact that the school provides a service, and then they are basically discriminating against part of their students because of where they live.”   

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 29 2006. 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