UH seeks higher fees for parking permits, citations

The cost of a parking ticket and other traffic violations on the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus would significantly increase next summer under a proposal that would bring campus fines in line with citations from Honolulu police and state sheriff’s deputies.

Parking in a prohibited area, for example, would nearly triple to $40 from $15. The fine for damaging campus signs or parking gates would go up fourfold to $100, while exceeding posted speed limits would increase to $97 from $20, according to a proposal by UH-Manoa’s Office of Campus Services, which oversees the university’s Commuter Services branch.

Campus officials say the branch needs the extra revenue from proposed hikes to both citations and campus parking permits to cover its operating expenses and make needed repairs to parking structures and lots. The Commuter Services branch is operated as a so-called special fund — legislatively created funds that can collect fees to support a program’s purpose and in theory should be self-sustaining.

“Despite efforts to maintain or reduce operating costs and despite deferring millions of dollars’ worth of repairs and maintenance, (UH-Manoa) Commuter Services can no longer maintain its self-sufficient status with its current rate structure,” Deborah Huebler, director of UH-Manoa Campus Services, wrote in a memorandum this month to the Board of Regents.

The branch posted an operating loss for fiscal 2014, when revenues of $6.2 million came in lower than expenditures of $6.7 million.

Huebler’s memo seeks approval to hold a public hearing on proposed amendments to the Hawaii Administrative Rules governing parking and operating motor vehicles on campus. The hearing request is scheduled to be taken up Thursday at a joint meeting of the regents’ Budget and Finance and Planning and Facilities committees.

The university also is proposing increasing campus parking rates for faculty, staff and students over a five-year period, beginning July 1. Rates would go up in increments of 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent a year.

A 2010 peer review that compared parking operations at seven universities — among them the University of Arizona, San Francisco State University and Boise State University — found that permitted annual parking at UH-Manoa appeared to be “about in the middle of the peer group” but “significantly underpriced as compared to the local market.” Revenues from parking permits represent the largest chunk of income for the Manoa Commuter Services branch, totaling $2.7 million in fiscal 2014, followed by revenue from daily parking at $2.5 million.

Parking rates have been increased three times in the past two decades: in 2011, 2010 and 1997. “This minimal rate increase over time has negatively impacted Commuter Services’ ability to keep up with the inflation of its operating expenses and the costs for critical repair and maintenance projects,” Huebler wrote.

She said without the parking increases, subsidized services such as the free Rainbow Shuttle for nearby residents — which averages 40,000 riders a month during the school year — would have to be reduced or eliminated. Personnel services for enforcement, traffic control and security for special events would also have to be reduced.

The proposal seeks a new tier of parking fees for students, who currently pay the same annual rate as employees. The student rate would see smaller hikes over the five-year schedule in recognition of “the need to assist students with the cost of attendance,” the memo says.

“We’re definitely trying as much as possible not to have students bear the brunt of costs,” UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said. “This is supposed to be a self-sustaining operation, and what they have done to make ends meet, unfortunately, which has been the case for the university with the belt-tightening after the Great Recession, is defer much-needed maintenance. The last thing we want to do is increase fees for anything, but these increases are needed.”

UH-Manoa currently charges $426 for an annual parking permit for parking on the lower campus (below Dole Street) and $579 for annual parking on the upper campus.

The new student rate would increase by 10 percent in the first year to $471 for an annual permit, or $157 for a semester (fall, spring or summer) permit. The rates would go up by 5 percent in each of the next four years to $579 a year, or $193 a semester, by fiscal 2021.

The employee rate, meanwhile, would increase by 15 percent in the first year to $492 a year for lower-campus parking and to $666 for upper-campus parking.

The lower-campus rate would go up by an additional 15 percent the following year and by 5 percent for the remaining years, ultimately increasing to $660 a year by the end of the five years. The upper-campus rate would go up by 15 percent in the second year, 10 percent the next year and 5 percent in each of the last two years, up to $936 a year in the end.

Huebler said the inventory of upper-campus stalls has been decreasing annually because of construction projects, “making upper campus parking more prime than ever.”