From the Office of the Interim Vice President

I understand. Paying for parking can be hard when you are also paying tuition, fees, and living expenses. Living in Bend is expensive – there is no doubt about that. The cost of living is roughly 25% higher than the average town in the United States. Food and housing insecurity for students is real. According to a Hope Survey from 2020, 29% of students at four-year colleges reported experiencing food insecurity over a 30-day period. College food insecurity has been called an “invisible epidemic” on top of the very visible pandemic (endemic?) we have been experiencing. It is a lot.

The obvious question then becomes “why does parking cost so much?”

As I mentioned in my first parking blog, there really is no such thing as “free parking.” We talked last time about how the cost of operating and maintaining a parking lot is real and is passed on to consumers in one way or another. Paving, re-striping, and snow removal are tangible costs. At OSU-Cascades, auxiliary budgets are required to balance. This ensures educational funds (i.e. tuition) do not end up covering shortages in other campus operating expenses. Auxiliary budgets include housing, dining and, yes, parking. So, the parking operation on campus must pay for itself.

How are parking rates set?

Let’s be perfectly transparent and take a look at the parking pro forma here at OSU-Cascades. (A pro forma helps in calculating financial results using various assumptions or projections.) As you know, the daily parking rate in the new lot off Simpson Ave. is $2. It’s $4 in the Chandler Ave. lot. Based on these rates, parking revenue for this fiscal year is estimated at $99,750 –nearly $100k for the year. That sounds like a lot, but in reality the two lots will cost an estimated $150,563 to operate and maintain this year. Therefore, we have a net revenue that is negative by over $50,000. Obviously, we are bringing in less revenue this year than our expenses, but the decision was made (by me) to keep parking costs as low as possible. I studied the parking pro forma to make sure that parking fees were commensurate with projected parking expenses so that you wouldn’t have to pay more than the absolute minimum. However, you can see that we are still projecting a deficit indicating that we should all actually be paying more for parking to make ends meet. I made a conscious decision to keep rates lower this year in the hopes that our expenses, particularly around snow removal, might be less than we projected.

Downtown Bend employees’ pay for parking, too

I know that parking rates are high, relatively speaking, on campus. I took a look at rates for folks that work in downtown Bend. Did you know that if you work downtown, you have to pay for parking in various locations around the downtown area? Those rates vary from $20 to $50 per month with the parking garage downtown costing $40 per month. The cost structure is based on convenience, with the closest locations being more expensive. There is no question that our Chandler lot rates are on the high side while our Simpson rates are within this range. It is also very interesting that a discounted range is offered for downtown employees that make less than $17 per hour. Would a similar program here be helpful and how would we as a campus prioritize funding a program like this? Let me know in the comments below.

I could have made parking rates $3 per day across all campus parking lots. That would seem fair, but I also wanted to be able to give students, staff, and faculty a lower cost option. It seemed reasonable to have the Chandler lot, which is obviously deemed more convenient, cost more so that everyone could decide for themselves based on their own perceptions of cost versus convenience. (It is fun to think that the Simpson lot will actually be more convenient in the future for many of us as the campus grows to the north and west!)

We all know that there are “free” parking options available near campus. While we do not encourage parking off-campus for the betterment of our relationships with our neighbors, its availability was also part of my decision-making. While OSU-Cascades cannot offer “free” parking in our lots, it is available at a “cost of convenience” to anyone that needs it.

What do you think?

One suggestion that I have heard, and it makes some sense to me, is that if parking fees were lowered, then more people would use the lots, and OSU-Cascades would make more money in the process. This may be true, and we do have half-full lots at times. However, if we try this and it doesn’t result in more revenue, then we will need to go back to charging even more for parking to make up for it. I’d be willing to try it, but I would need students, faculty and staff to commit to using the lots. What do you think?

I know that there are issues with the app, the app fees, month-long or term-long permits, residential student parking, and other topics. We will begin to address those in the coming blogs.

Leave me a comment and, as always, STAY TUNED.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Joni Mitchell