Ventura Country Community College students will see an increase in parking pass fees beginning in fall 2019. The new semester parking fee will increase by $4, totaling $58. While summer parking for 2020 will total $29.
Currently, students are expected to pay for a pass valued at $54 for either fall or spring semesters and $27 for the summer semester. These increases are to help operations of police services as well as parking services at each college in the Ventura County Community College district according to board documents.
However, parking fees charged to the California Promise Grant (formerly Board of Governors Fee Waiver) recipients will remain at $30 per semester, as Education Code §76360 exempts them from an increase higher than $30 for parking.
Although the fees are to help support costs such as campus police, maintenance of parking structures, site improvements and parking permit machines. The increase of parking service fees has brought light to the current state of the Ventura County Community College District Police Department being underfunded.
Joel Justice, Chief of the Ventura County Community College District Police Department, gave an overview of some of the shortages the department is facing.
“In my opinion, we don’t have enough police officers and the ones that I do are under-equipped and the vehicles are old,” Justice said. “I think two-thirds of our fleet have over a hundred thousand miles on them and several cars aren’t working anymore. They’re just parked.”
According to Justice, even though the police department’s deployment is low, Moorpark College can rely on outside agencies to help during emergencies. Justice weighed in on the increase of parking fees and said that his top priority for all three campuses is student safety.
“I honestly think it’s a small fee to pay to get our officers more equipment and training and have them better able to respond because the alternative is waiting for the outside agency to get here and if you are looking at the four dollars it is money well spent,” Justice said.
The additional revenue derived from the parking fee increase will also aid in collecting additional financial contributions for the General Fund 111, a principal operating fund of the district.
During a Board of Trustees meeting Vice Chancellor of Business and Administrative Services David El Fattal presented the proposed agenda to increase the semester parking fee for this upcoming fiscal year 2019-20.
“The state provides guidance on an annual basis and comes from the state Chancellor’s office with the amount that is calculated from the implicit price deflator, which is a national statistic,” El Fattal said. “And so the $58 is the amount that could be charged and that’s why it increased to that amount.”
Currently, no changes to the daily parking fees for the next school year will be implemented. Students attending Moorpark College are typically on campus from Monday through Thursday and tend to pay the whole semester parking pass. Through calculations, if a student decides to pay for daily parking of $2 for 18 weeks, it would be a greater amount paid than a full semester pass.
Justin Downes, 38, a journalism student at Moorpark College responds to the forthcoming changes for the fall.
“It’s a pain for students who are strapped for cash,” Downes said. “It may help, but students will [eventually] be against it.”
El Fattal acknowledges some of the challenges college students face which may include homelessness issues, food insecurities, not having enough money or juggling family responsibilities.
“So there are a lot of issues that community college students in particular face and we know that. We are not interested in adding fees on top to negatively impact students,” El Fattal said. “However, we do need to provide safe and secure areas on campus and safe parking lots for students and this helps to do that in order to enhance the whole college experience.”
