As the decision regarding the proposed price increases for next year’s campus parking permits draws closer, University staff took the opportunity to examine the issue at the Staff Senate Open Forum held Thursday.

The N.C. State Board of Trustees, in its April meeting, will decide whether to initiate a 9 percent across-the-board increase in prices for permits, meant to stave off a lawsuit expected to cost the University around $4 million.

According to Tom Kendig, director of Transportation, the price spikes are a way to address the “immediate crisis” in this year’s Transportation budget.

“Next year is the real pinch year,” he said. “We absolutely need that 9 percent increase to get through.”

The lawsuit, filed by the N.C. School Boards Association, stakes a claim on the funding gathered from penalty fines from institutions all over the state, the “clear proceeds” of which are earmarked for local school systems.

But the term “clear proceeds” caused a problem in its interpretation, only recently specified by legislation as 90 percent, in Transportation’s case, of parking penalty revenue.

And for a department whose only source of funding is parking fines, student fees and permit sales, the loss of that much revenue is a big deal for Transportation.

“We have to deal with a loss of fined revenue and grow the services we need to grow,” Kendig said.

But staff Sen. Valerie Ball, an employee at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, said her constituents do not agree it is a fair way of coming up with the money.

An owner of an “E” permit, Ball said she already parks in a gravel lot near the School of Veterinary Medicine and walks a little farther to avoid other already highly priced permits.

She said the University needs to put more effort into “creative alternatives.”

“There’s a pervasive feeling that it’s an unfair fee to levy,” she said. “It’s just another thing with shrinking [employee] benefits.”

According to Melissa Watkins, chair of the Senate, the body has already taken a united stance on the issue, sending a letter to Transportation in early February explaining its objections.

“My viewpoint is in agreement [with the Staff Senate] that we believe the burden should not be shouldered on the backs of faculty, staff and students,” Watkins said, who pointed out the Senate will also be writing the Trustees before the decision is made.

She said staff members are hit harder by increases like these, even though proposals for the most common employee permit, as Kendig pointed out, only amounts to an extra $1.25 each month.

Some of the employees, she said, are barely paid $21,000 a year and already can’t afford the rising cost of benefits like health insurance.

“Many of our staff employees are first line, low-paying jobs — they’re trying to get their foot in the door to get a better education and provide for their families,” she said. “Parking is just like the straw that’s beginning to break the back.”

Kendig said he agrees the increases can have a large impact on lower income employees, and pointed out Transportation has tried to minimize this impact by increasing different permits at different rates.

For example, although employee parking is projected to increase by 5.4 percent, permits for the “A” lots, often closer and more convenient, are proposed to increase by 13 percent.

“If people want that kind of service, they’re going to have to pay for it,” he said.

Watkins said she understands the rising costs to do business often correlate with a rise in prices, but this, she said, is a different matter.

“[The price increase] isn’t anything in direct relation to that,” Watkins said. “It’s a University issue to us, not an individual Transportation issue.”

But Kendig pointed out this is an issue long-term planning or University intervention may not solve.

“It was a provision in the constitution nobody really thought about for years,” Kendig said. “This isn’t anything [the University] or Transportation did. I don’t think anybody could have foreseen this.”

And the General Assembly isn’t likely to help either.

In fact, the state’s legislative body has already voted to remove $102 million from the funding of public schools this year, in anticipation of the increased revenue stemming from the lawsuit.

“They’ve taken the money already,” Kendig said. “They’re not motivated to find any other solution.”

Unless somebody comes up with a better idea in the meantime, Kendig said, there are no alternative plans to come up with the money for the suit.

“Short of having multiple bake sales or receiving a check from some rich uncle, it looks like we’re out of other options,” he said.

But Watkins said the Senate is trying to change that.

“We’ve put out a call for creative ideas and suggestions [to solve the problem], ways other than increasing permit fees,” Watkins said.

She said they have gotten feedback from the community, although she is not yet sure if they are “viable alternatives.”

“What we are hoping to do is present alternate proposals and for them to tell us whether they are feasible,” Watkins said. “We want to be part of the solution of trying to find a creative way to raise money and we want everybody else to be a part of that too.”

In addition to this year’s proposed increases, Kendig said students can expect to see continued proposals for “characteristic increases” in the transit fee. According to Watkins, there are also plans to propose 7 percent across-the-board increases to parking permits for the next two years.

The lawsuit itself has been a more than seven-year process that has traced its path all the way to the N.C. Supreme Court.

Although they have ruled on the case, Transportation is still waiting on the district courts to decide how far back the fine will actually go.

The worst-case scenario and the one Kendig said the department has been planning for, is that the penalty will be retroactive since December 1995.

It amounts to a fine of more than $6 million.

The timeline for the decision however, is still a little shaky.

“We talked to the University attorneys and everybody just really shrugs their shoulders, because it depends on agendas and schedules of the court system,” Kendig said. “Obviously, the sooner, the better — it’s this continuous uncertainty that’s really driving us crazy.”