Campus parking office splits from UNT Police Department
Parking tickets given for parking in a grassy area sit under a driver's windshield wiper in UNT parking lot 7 on Wednesday, August 26, 2015. Hannah Lauritzen | Design Editor
Alejandro Medellin | Staff Writer
Chelsea Watkins | Copy Editor
As of Friday, the Department of Parking and Transportation is no longer a wing of the UNT Police Department, UNT officials said. Instead, the office’s director, Geary Robinson, will report to university information services vice president Allen Clark.
The change comes after weeks of meeting between the parking and the police departments, and will centralize all transportation efforts campus-wide. Robinson said parking will soon become the Department of Transportation.
“We don’t want to make it a negative for the university,” Robinson said. “We want to make sure this is a positive.”
This is all according to UNT’s campus master plan, the guide for the facilities reconfiguration currently underway.
The parking office will continue to handle parking tickets, university spokeswoman Margarita Venegas said.
In 2015, the university generated about $1.2 million in revenue from parking citations on campus, according to documents obtained by the North Texas Daily.
Students at the University of Texas at Arlington paid $346,501 in 2015. UT brought in $937,867. Texas Woman’s University tickets approximately $120,000 per year, officials said.
Money brought in from parking violations fund parking services, like cleaning the parking lots and improving lighting around campus.
“I don’t have any problem looking at someone that’s gotten a ticket and saying, your money just helped repave that lot, or plant that tree, or replace that light,” Robinson said.
The most common parking violations are vehicles not displaying valid permits and expired meters and time zones, Robinson said.
The department is conducting a study to alter they way the handle parking – looking into how many permits are sold and figuring out if they want to build more parking garages across campus.
The Highland Parking Garage cost the university $21 million. By the time they are done paying for it, with a 1.4 annual bond payment included, it’ll have cost $40 million, he said.
“So, what if we took that same $20 million and invested it in a very robust transportation system and by saying system, I’m not saying buses. I’m saying the different modes of transport,” Robinson said.
Robinson said he believes the university will have to build at least one or two more parking garages to alleviate parking struggles, but hopes it won’t exceed that.
UNT is a business designed to sell indentured servants to the corporations who sell student loans. They refer to students as “customers” and treat them like ATMs.