Ball State University students can find some comfort in knowing the number of parking tickets given this academic year has decreased by 18,000 tickets.
Gene Burton, director of the Ball State Department of Public Safety, said he attributed the decrease from 44,000 tickets to approximately 26,000 tickets to consistent enforcement by the parking services staff.
In previous years, parking services had problems with maintaining enough people on staff to adequately enforce the parking, he said. Because parking services has maintained a full staff this year and is better able to cover all parking areas, more people are complying with the rules, Burton said.
"We can now place a greater emphasis on the areas we need to at the time we need to," he said. "People will not take the chance to park their car where they are not supposed to now that we can consistently monitor the lots."
Nancy Wray, office manager for parking services, said the average number of parking citations was between 40,000 and 44,000 during the past few years.
Despite the high number of parking tickets Ball State gives, other Indiana universities give more tickets; however, they have also seen a decline in parking citations.
Donna Kemper, parking facilities manager at Purdue University, said Purdue's parking citations had decreased from 48,000 during the 2003-04 academic year to 42,000 during the 2004-05 academic year. She said the numbers for the 2005-06 academic year had not been tallied.
Kemper said she thought Purdue's decline in parking citations was because more people were riding the shuttle system and more people are living at home. She hoped to continue seeing a decrease so those people with permits could find a place to park, she said.
Heather Staggs, parking supervisor at Indiana University parking operations, said Indiana's tickets have decreased from 67,369 this time last year to 59,063 so far. Indiana's parking operations has also had a decrease during the past few years because of the amount of information given to their customers, she said.
Staggs contributed Indiana's decrease to three factors Indiana's parking operations were implementing. The first factor was constantly looking at the parking contracts people signed to make sure the contracts were clear. Staggs said parking operations was providing more information to the students and faculty by listing parking regulations on the Web site as well as giving out handouts when parking permits were issued. Parking operations was also putting advanced warning notices on cars before the parking permit expired or before vehicles needed to be moved prior to athletic events, she said.
Wray said she was pleased to see such a significant decrease in parking tickets because the decrease meant people were parking where they were should. She said the 18,000 ticket decrease was for all parking at Ball State including the seven green commuter lots, the eight red restricted lots, the three parking garages, the eight blue housing lots and about 12 yellow general lots.
Wray said she would prefer everyone just register their car and park where they were supposed to instead of getting tickets.
"Ball State does not really have a situation where there is not enough parking," Wray said. "We have an issue where Ball State does not have enough convenient parking."
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