City generates $71,000 from tickets

There may not be a bigger, more discussed issue on the campus of Georgia College than parking availability around campus and the downtown district of Milledgeville.

The Milledgeville Police Department issued 4,593 parking tickets last fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. In total, those tickets generated a total revenue of $71,667.25. That revenue goes into general funds for the city of Milledgeville and can be spent on anything dealing with the city.

“The intent of the parking tickets is having turnover of parking spaces,” Milledgeville Chief of Police Woodrow Blue said. “Our college is located downtown in the middle of the business district. One of the biggest complaints from the business district, besides speeding, is the fact that there are people who park there all day, and the customers from the town cannot come in and do business with the business owners.”

The current city parking policy guarantees two-hour parking for commuters in city parking spaces, but after two hours, an initial $10 fee is charged for overtime parking. This can lead to another $10 fee for excessive overtime or a $25 fee on first offense for not paying the ticket within 10 business days. The steepest fine is the $173 charge for parking in a handicapped parking spot without a proper permit.

Alternative methods have either been implemented or discussed in the past, according to Blue.

One such method is parking meters, which Blue said Milledgeville had in the past but discontinued due to several reasons.

“One issue was that the Historical Preservation Commission thought their presence took away from the historic district,” Blue said. “A lot of people tended to think they were a little sore on the eyes.”

Blue contends that there are far more disadvantages than advantages to having a parking meter system in Milledgeville.

“Much of the issue is that you’re charging people to park, and that could both significantly hurt businesses by driving customers away, and also driving business owners away from the downtown area,” Blue said. “And also, with a parking meter, you would still have to have a parking person on duty driving around and making sure people are putting the coins in the meter, and there would be some extra costs in that as well.”

Cost, along with space availability is also the major issue behind another alternative idea, a city parking deck in the downtown area.

“The problem is that the costs would be just astronomical, easily millions of dollars,” Blue said.

Blue added that the current system works well and there is ample room for parking and transportation to campus for students going to class.

“You have the parking lot off of Hancock Street down by Irwin Street, which has spaces available. Then you have shuttles for the students who are in the dorms,” Blue said. “We have a lot of students from West Campus driving to campus when they could be catching the shuttle that is provided by them as well as students at Magnolia Park. And we have commuter lots at the Centennial Center and another gravel commuter lot. So they have plenty of options available.”