Issue Briefs: Parking: Summary of Facts

1. All campus parking functions are likely to experience higher operating and maintenance costs over the next several years, and these increased costs will necessitate increases in parking fees.
   
   
2. The demand for additional parking capacity systemwide is already high and is likely to grow at a rate comparable to the systemwide FTES growth rate. Investments in new parking facilities are likely to grow at a much faster rate than in the recent past as the system seeks to address the backlog of needed capacity and as existing parking lots are replaced by higher-density, higher-cost parking structures. Adding new parking capacity will necessitate increases in parking fees.
   
   
3. The parking function is required to be financially self-supporting and funded through user fees. Campus presidents may adjust parking fees after consultation with the campus fee advisory committee; however, CFA- and CSEA-represented employees are not required to pay parking fee increases, according to the terms of their contracts, which fix their fees at the level they were on the effective dates of their contracts.
   
   
4. In the CSU parking is a “bargainable” issue for all unions. Under current CFA and CSEA contracts, members may not have their parking fees increased, although they may agree to pay higher parking fees.
   
   
5. Because user fees fund parking, the inability to raise the parking fees of certain segments of the user community shifts the cost burden to other campus constituencies. The amount of “cost-shifting” varies from campus to campus. In the absence of a systemwide resolution of the issue or a voluntary agreement by CFA and CSEA, the cumulative amount of cost-shifting through FY2004/2005 is estimated at $6.7M.