The Chapel Hill parking superintendent says that leases for residents will be reviewed more thoroughly starting June 30, 2011, due to a violation of the town’s code of ordinances.

Brenda Jones verifies parking permits for Chapel Hill residents, which are issued July 1 and expire June 30. This verification process includes the review of leases.

“We [Chapel Hill Parking Services] are here to enhance the quality of life of the residents,” she said.

Though residential parking permits are issued freely, Jones said that honesty is needed for Chapel Hill parking services to continue to work in the best interest of its residents.

“It’s free,” she said, “it’s been free for years. We want people that are honest and that sincerely need them and are not trying to take advantage of the system.”

The maximum number of parking permits allowed per household is five. However, the parking services issues parking permits based on how many off-street parking spaces are available and the number of vehicles per house.

Jones said that the process for issuing parking permits includes reviewing leases and approving driver’s licenses and vehicle registration information. Then the parking permit is issued to the corresponding vehicle’s license plate number and put into the Chapel Hill Parking Services’ system.

“In the process of reviewing,” she said, “more [parking permits] would be issued based on the number of vehicles that reside at a house.” Thus, with help from a traffic engineer, the Chapel Hill Parking Services checks to make sure that trafficking problems and safety hazards of the town will not violate the town’s Code of Ordinances.

Despite this fact, residents at 407 W. Patterson Place are violating the ordinance by having more than four unrelated people living together in a 3-bedroom house. Not one, or two, but seven students are living in this home.

Though this may be a way of accommodating the needs of a group of college students, rules are rules, and if they’re broken once they’ll be broken again. That is if it isn’t regulated.

Jones said that she normally doesn’t thoroughly review names listed on a lease. She said, “There hasn’t ever been an issue to review the leases more thoroughly.” But, it was a little too late when she noticed that additional names had been added further down into the lease at the West Patterson Place house. This calls for action, according to Jones.

On behalf of Chapel Hill Parking Services, she said, “we’ll be reviewing our process for issuing [permits]. We’ll audit all of our locations to see if they are eligible for parking.”

What’s all the fuss about?

The number of permits issued to tenants at 407 W. Patterson Place meant that cars were being parked on both sides of the street. At times this made the street appear too narrow for a fire truck or ambulance to drive down the street in case of an emergency.

Jones said that all Chapel Hill residents who request parking permits will be reviewed closely next year. Thus, some parking permits may be revoked or denied. And some residents should definitely be aware of the new verification process at hand.

“Our purpose is to allow for the supplement of parking,” Jones said, “if there is a need.”
– Ebony Shamberger

UNC-Chapel Hill students living off-campus are fed up with on-campus parking, or should I say lack thereof. On any given weeknight, it is at least a 20-minute ordeal to try to find a parking spot near the library or campus in general. And as it gets colder, the fight for close parking spots can get personal.

It is most frustrating when UNC closes off whole on-campus parking lots at night for sporting events and performing art shows when students really need to utilize those spots.

“It’s irritating when I need to get to campus to study and people who aren’t part of the university have priority over campus spots,” said Elyse Aldana, a junior anthropology major.

Aldana spent 35 minutes looking for a parking spot during exam week, after finding her usual parking lot reserved for an event.

The strict parking enforcement of Chapel Hill is quite another student hassle. With the shortage of legal spots, students improvise, resulting in towing and numerous parking tickets. But even the legal spots are unfair to students. Dozens of spots surrounding campus are metered or reserved until 9 p.m. Nine o’clock at night is not the ideal start for a student with an 8 a.m. exam the next morning. Peter Helvie, a senior biology and Italian double major with a minor in chemistry living off-campus, has accumulated five parking tickets this semester alone. Like many other out-of-state students, Helvie is not only subjected to a hefty tuition bill but also a quarter for every 10 minutes at a metered spot on campus and high costs for unfair parking tickets.

So why not just build more parking lots and decks just for students?

Lauren Yeargin, a junior contemporary European studies and political science double major living in a house off-campus, opposes this idea as a solution. Like many other students, Yeargin values the beauty of Chapel Hill’s campus and would rather not see it turn into brick and concrete.

“Yeah, it’s a hassle, but I’ll sacrifice that time rather than having my campus look like N.C. State’s,” Yeargin said.

While it is unlikely that students will be granted better parking access on game days or see the construction of “student only” parking lots any time soon, the least UNC could do in the meantime is abandon the 9 p.m. rule. I suggest changing all metered and reserved spots to 5 p.m. This would open up a good number of spots to students looking to drive to campus and would lessen the worry of getting a ticket in the process. This is a simple step forward. After all, shouldn’t student academics and access to campus resources be the number one concern for a university, not parking revenue and visitor parking preference?

On-campus parking at UNC-Chapel Hill is not the only parking problem arising. The Town of Chapel Hill is impossible fare as well. To make matters worse, the town-owned Parking Lot 5 at the intersection of West Franklin Street and Church Street will be closing in January to construct a development in its place. The town of Chapel Hill will be losing 103 parking spaces in an already limited parking area of Franklin Street. But that’s another story…
— Cat DiPaci

Cat DiPaci is a journalism major who writes for The Well-Being Magazine, UNC’s health and fitness magazine. A Public Service Scholar, she is in her junior year at UNC.

Don and I met a friend downtown for lunch yesterday, and as we drove along West Franklin Street, we passed several open parking spaces, but the meters had bags over them, usually an indication of a broken meter. We didn’t realize that these spaces were part of the new parking pay stations being installed, so we kept on driving until we found a space with a traditional meter, unbagged, a few blocks away. We fed it some quarters and hustled back to the restaurant, negotiating who would have to zip back to feed the meter if our lunch ran long.

When we arrived, we saw our friend pulling into one of the bagged meter spaces. He got out and punched in the numbers at the pay station kiosk, only to be greeted with an “Out of Order” message. He opted to remain parked and see what would happen if a parking division officer came by. None did, so we were left with nothing to write about for the blog.

So we made some inquiry and learned that each pay station is able to service only the few spaces closest to it. The town had considered and rejected a wireless pay system. With a wireless system, if we had parked a few blocks from the restaurant and got close to the end of the amount of time we’d bought, we could go to the pay station closest to the restaurant and buy more time.

But that convenience was the very reason the town voted it down. The town feared it would be too convenient for UNC students who lived off-campus to park in the spaces while they were in class (as opposed to spending money in Franklin Street businesses) and buy more time from a station close to campus. If they had to run all the way down West Franklin Street to buy more time, they might decide to find a different place to park.

Other than during the lunch hour rush, though, you’d think the town would be happy to have the extra parking revenue from students, especially in light of town manager Roger Stancil admitting at the Nov. 22 meeting that parking revenue would not cover the cost of debt service, contrary to what he’d previously thought. As we walked back to our parking space after 2 p.m., ours was one of only three cars parked in that three-block stretch. Filling those spaces with students’ cars for a few hours might help the town’s bottom line. So would repairing the parking pay stations.
– Nancy Oates