Paying to work: Union for UNR, UNLV workers protests increased parking charges

Friday, Dec. 3, 2004 | 9:38 a.m.

Annual cost of university parking permits:

Reserved, $532.40; Faculty/staff, $159.72; Student, $79.86. There is a free lot with 289 spaces available on the far west side of campus.

Silver (1-5 minute walk or shuttle), $320; Green (5-10 minute walk or shuttle, $155; Blue (10 to 15 minute walk or shuttle), $65.

The State of Nevada Employees Association brought its battle over parking fees at UNR down south Thursday night by picketing in front of UNLV's main campus.

About 50 union members, UNLV employees and a handful of students who actually stayed to picket and not just score a free hot dog marched on the sidewalk along Maryland Parkway, chanting for university officials to do away with the hefty parking permit fees.

Students came to gawk at the protesters, and drivers going by honked in approval as the crowd protested a the university's scheduled 10 percent increase in parking permit fees.

"Pretty much we have to pay to come to work," Harry Schiffman, an electrician for UNLV's facilities and maintenance department, said.

"You're either paying to subsidize something or you're paying for the privilege of coming to work."

UNLV employees, mostly from classified staff positions like Schiffman, said they were especially angry that the university was raising parking fees by 10 percent when most state employees only get a 2 percent raise each year.

The union organization, which represents only a couple of hundred UNLV employees, has followed the Board of Regents for the last three meetings in an attempt to get the regents to address the escalating parking fees at both UNR and UNLV.

SNEA was scheduled to go before the board this afternoon.

"They keep wracheting up the parking fees ... and our members have come to us and said enough is enough," said Scott MacKenzie, executive director of SNEA which is part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 4041.

UNLV faculty and staff currently pay about $160 a year to park, but can choose to park in student parking for only $80 a year or can park for free in a more distant lot on the west side of campus, Michael Sauer, associate vice president for administration, said.

Students pay $80 a year to park or may also park in the free lot, Sauer said.

UNR faculty, staff and students pay $65 to $320 depending on how close they want to park, Ronald Zurek, vice president for finance and administration said. Most pay about $155 a year.

UNLV and UNR officials say the fees go strictly to pay for the maintenance and operation of the parking lots, including the bond debt on the construction of new spaces and parking garages. But SNEA organizers say their members are being unfairly taxed to go to work and that the "excessive" permit fees have resulted in million-dollar reserves in the parking budgets.

"We understand parking is a problem, but why should the employees pay for the state's capital improvements?" MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie said his organization's main beef remains more with UNR. UNLV does at least give employees the option of parking for free, but he said the principle behind the picketing remains the same.

"Our goal is to have meaningful discussions with the university system," MacKenzie said by phone from his Carson City office. "... They (our members) want an opportunity to discuss this instead of fees with no end in sight."

UNLV officials said they were surprised by the plans to picket because SNEA officials have not contacted them and they have heard no grousing from their employees about the parking fees.

The fees were first instituted in 1995 by Gov. Kenny Guinn, then acting as UNLV's president, as a means of providing the revenue needed to begin addressing the growing parking problem.

More recently, in 2000-2001, a committee of faculty, staff and classified employees assigned to come up with solutions for UNLV's parking shortage recommended that the university begin to increase its parking permit fees by 10 percent each year in order to pay for more parking spaces and garages.

The Cottage Grove parking garage near Artemus Ham Hall was recently completed, and the university has five more garages in its master plan, Sauer said. The university is currently wrapping up a parking study that will include designs for a new garage near Moyer Student Union.

The cost of these garages, however, may be upward of $200 million to $300 million, Sauer said.

Both UNLV and UNR officials denied SNEA's claims that the universities were somehow profiting from the sale of parking permits, or that the money was being siphoned to other needs in the university.

Sauer said UNLV actually lost money this year, making $1,343,215 in permit sales and spending $1,385,499 on bond payments and operating costs. The $1.9 million positive balance in the parking services budget includes $1.6 million in bond money designated for future garages, and the rest is reserve money for the $1.25 million the university pays toward its parking bond debt each year, Sauer said.

Zurek said UNR has a $2.5 million balance now because basic maintenance needs on the parking lots were postponed for the last several years because of fears that steel prices would increase the costs on a parking garage currently under construction. Now that the garage looks to be coming in within its budget, Zurek said those maintenance needs will be met and the income and expenditures will balance out again.

The $2.5 million balance in UNR's account for fiscal year 2004 also does not include a nearly $1 million bond payment the university paid on the first day of fiscal year 2005 (July 1, 2004), Zurek said. But MacKenzie said UNR originally tried to hide that they had that much in the account, and he wants regents to do an official audit.