Students, faculty and staff will pay higher parking fees in spring 2009, Sacramento State announced Friday.

Student parking permits will rise from $24 per month to $34 per month, which will raise the semester parking permit to $153 in spring 2009. The increase is to keep in check with rising costs.

This will be the second parking fee increase since January 2007 when the daily parking permit increased from $2.75 to $5. However, this will be the first monthly parking permit fee increase since fall 2003.

Prior to fall 2003, student parking permits cost $85.50 and were raised by 26 percent to the current $108 rate.

“We have put off increasing fees for as long as we could,” University Transportation and Parking Services Director Nancy Fox said.

Not only students, but also the President’s Cabinet, deans and other campus management employees will be affected as well. UTAPS cannot raise faculty and staff parking rates since they are negotiated through contracts.

New fees were implemented for only faculty and staff in the past 5 and a half years due to collective bargaining negotiations. During this time UTAPS decided not to include students with the fee increase, Fox said.

“We tried to freeze the student parking rate at the fall 2003 level for as long as possible because we recognized that students were facing rising costs associated with CSU fees,” she said.

The fee increases are due to the increase of over all rising costs, as well as an additional $1.88 million debt acquired from the building of Parking Structure III, Fox said.

UTAPS is self-supporting and revenue comes from the sales of parking permits. With the school not reaching its enrollment growth target rate of 2 to 3 percent per year, sales have not reached projections, Fox said.

Rising fees have discouraged students like Don Johnson, undeclared sophomore.

“I think I’ll just bike (to school),” he said.

UTAPS has taken some initiative to save on costs.

“We have deferred maintenance in parking facilities,” Fox said.

UTAPS has been putting off repaving driving lanes and repainting lines until it can better fund the project.

The increase in fees is projected to bring in $4,461,893 for the 2008 – 09 year, according to Sac State officials.

Mikhail Chernyavsky can be reached at [email protected]