Parking Proposal Would Include Fines
If students find parking around campus to be a hassle now, well, the worst might be yet to come. The City of Moorhead is moving forward with efforts to address congestion caused by the volume of students living and driving near Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia. At issue are two situations in particular.
Vehicles parked bumper to bumper along residential roads have a negative impact on community character and property values, according to a presentation given by city officials at an open house on April 25. They also create a general nuisance for property owners living near the two campuses.
To change this situation, the city government has proposed a system of parking permits and fines around the campuses. Proposed ordinances include the establishment of permit parking zones in which non-permit holders are restricted to one-hour, on-street parking between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. A $10 annual fee would be charged for permits, and $40 fines have been proposed for violators.
The plan was presented to the public at an open house on April 25, 2007. Most of those in attendance were neighborhood residents, with a much smaller turn out of college faculty and students. Comment cards filled out by attendees at the event indicated twenty-one neighborhood residents, five college faculty members and one student, although others attended who did not submit feedback forms with their demographic information.
On-street parking and rental housing around Concordia and MSUM came under fire at the open house, according to one of the comment cards reproduced online.
“Not enough attention is paid to externalities of rental or higher density housing,” wrote one resident, referring in part to congested parking.
Changes in rental codes are also proposed in the Moorhead Neighborhood Planning report, in order to limit the legal occupancy of rental properties to their capacity for off-street parking. This would affect properties where renters currently are forced to park on the street due to lack of driveway space, lowering the number of occupants legally able to reside in those units.
These problems and proposed solutions are detailed in a Moorhead Neighborhood Planning document released in June under the title, Potential Implementation Steps – Parking.
“With the availability of unrestricted on-street parking that is in some cases closer to campus buildings than parking lots, students and faculty often choose on-street parking because it is more convenient,” the report said, “Because on-street parking is currently free around the two campuses, parkers have little incentive to use lots that they must pay to use (MSUM) or may be located further from their desired location than an on-street space (Concordia).”
The document indicates that the possibility exists for students and faculty to park in on-campus lots instead of on the street.
“Representatives of the parking offices at both schools report that there is often unused capacity in the parking lots,” the introduction said.
Though the proposal has remained relatively low-profile, this week saw opposition efforts begin to coalesce. The People Escaping Poverty Project (PEPP) in Moorhead began advertising at Concordia and MSUM on Monday for an informational and planning meeting on Wednesday night at their offices. At the meeting, mostly attended by MSUM students, reaction to the plan was overwhelmingly negative, and initial sentiment on Concordia’s campus seems to match that.
“I really feel like the city is pulling the lids over our eyes,” Concordia junior Michael Lee said. “I don’t understand how when the city says they want to build a relationship with students that they’re about to pass something that would just add to the wall that already exists between the community and the students.”
After attending the meeting at PEPP, Lee created a Facebook group called Students Against Housing and Parking Restrictions that grew to 272 members in less than 24 hours.
The comparative lack of student representation in the process of elaborating the proposal was singled out for criticism at the PEPP meeting.
“There was one student present at one of their meetings,” PEPP organizer Octavio Gomez said. “All of these things directly affect students, so we’re trying to make sure that students get their voices heard.”
PEPP will host another meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 24. Organizers hope that many students will show up to help create alternative implementation proposals to take to the city.
MSUM’s Student Senate hosted a City Council candidate forum on Wednesday morning at which parking was universally recognized as a problem by the nine candidates in attendance. Two incumbent council members, Diane Wray Williams and Nancy Otto, mentioned the Neighborhood Planning process underway.
“Keep in mind, we do need to meet with college students yet. Over the spring and summer that’s very difficult, but be aware and ready to offer that input [now that school is back in session],” Otto said. “Whatever concerns you have…we do need to talk.”
Consultants are now preparing a final report based on the results of 18 months of studying parking and other issues, according to Lisa Vatnsdal, Manager of Neighborhood Services. The report will be presented to the Neighborhood Planning working group. If the working group comes to a quick consensus over the report, it will be presented to the Planning Commission on Nov. 7. Otherwise that presentation will happen at the next meeting on Dec. 4. After the Planning Commission deals with the report it would head to the policy makers at a City Council meeting.
