College gets its hand on some parking ticket revenue

Parked cars in student lot P9.

By Madeleine Villa

BELLEVILLE – The 2017 school year has brought a change to parking procedures at the college. A new program will shift parking ticket revenue from the municipal government to Loyalist College.

Mark Kirkpatrick, director of facilities and information technology services, said that historically all parking infraction revenue was given to the municipal government.

Now though, most of it will go to the college.

Kirkpatrick says this will benefit the school by giving them more control over ticket appeals. Last year, people who appealed their tickets would have to go to the city.

That became complicated for students and faculty alike.

The change also means that the extra revenue will go towards maintaining the parking lots.

Kirkpatrick says parking lot maintenance used to be paid for exclusively from a pot made up of money collected by parking permits. Now, there will be more money available for things like  snow removal, space painting, paving, as well as lighting costs and maintenance, because the pot will be larger thanks to the additional parking ticket revenue.

Tickets revenue that will be go to Loyalist College are for more “lenient” charges such as: parking without a permit, taking up more than one space, parking on the grass or parking in a faculty or carpool spot. These tickets can be paid online by debit or credit card anytime or in person by cash at the Service Desk, 2L20, Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Revenue from more serious parking charges are still to be paid to the municipal government. These are things like parking in a fire lane or parking in an accessible spot without proper identification.

Both types of tickets will still be handed out by Loyalist security. Municipal tickets will be ticketed by certain security personnel who are properly trained for the job. Loyalist College tickets show the logo while municipal tickets do not.

QNet News talked to permit-holding students about their general thoughts about parking here at the school. Some thought the permit prices were reasonable, others disagreed.

Emily Warwick is in her first year at Loyalist College studying bio-technology and said that the permit price was too expensive.

“Well it was quite a bit (of money) so my roommate helped pay for half of it.” When asked what a reasonable price would be she said “I would say $100”.

Loyalist College is actually much more affordable when it comes to two-semester parking permits, costing students only $165. While St. Lawrence College located in Kingston charges students $340, and students at Flemming College in Peterborough pay $365 for a general two-semester permit.

Kirkpatrick says “we try to keep the student pricing as reasonable as possible via, making sure we have enough revenue overall to maintain the lots.”

He is unsure what the extra revenue will be put towards, saying “when we are able to project gross revenue from parking we will then set an appropriate operational and maintenance budget.”