Executive Vice President John Temple and Emory Parking and Community Services (EPCS) Director Erick Gaither attended the May 17 Employee Council meeting to discuss the University's parking and traffic situation and next year's parking fee increase, which was approved recently by the Board of Trustees.
As of Feb. 1, 1996, annual parking hang tag fees for faculty and principals will increase from $66 to $126, and the University and Emory Hospital staff fee will increase from $36 to $66. Deck fees will remain at $108 per year, while the student fee will increase from $170 to $206 annually.
Temple said the debt amortization and maintenance costs of the new Peavine II and Michael Street III parking decks have prompted a substantial increase in next year's EPCS budget. That increase, Temple said, is what has led to the near doubling of faculty and staff hang tag fees for 1996. The amount employees are charged for parking, Temple said, is a fraction of what it actually costs the University to build and maintain parking facilities. Those costs are offset by visitor parking fees and contributions from the Fringe Benefits pool.
Gaither said that even though the fee increase for next year appears to be dramatic, Emory employee parking fees are relatively low. Faculty and staff at Georgia State University pay $319.92 per year, while Georgia Tech employees pay $180 annually. At Washington University in St. Louis, faculty and staff pay $450 per year for gated parking and $250 for open parking. At Duke University, the annual charge for gated parking is $300 for faculty and $150 for staff. At Carnegie Mellon, employee parking fees range from $364 for the most remote parking to $900 for parking closest to campus buildings. Vanderbilt University charges faculty and staff $84 a year for parking.
Despite the recent openings of two new decks, Gaither said that current projections indicate that Emory will have a shortage of 2,500 parking spaces by 1999. For that reason, EPCS is strongly encouraging employees to enroll in alternative commuting programs, such as fully subsidized MARTA transcards for employees who give up their parking hang tags, and reduced parking rates and premium deck spaces for carpoolers. <
*Undergraduate award: Rachel Lavin, a rising sophomore and member of Student Educators on Eating Disorders, for her paper "Disordered Eating and Poor Body Image Among Women Today: A Sociocultural Perspective."
*Graduate award: Nicole Cooley, a Ph.D. candidate in the English department, for her paper on "The Politics of Mis-Representation: Gary Marshall's `Pretty Woman' and Andre Breton's `Nadja.'"
*Professional student award: Angela Couch, a second-year law student, for her paper, "WANTED: Privacy Protection for Doctors Who Perform Abortions." Couch's paper was submitted earlier this semester to the Emory Law Journal.
Commission Chair Eliza Ellison announced that the group will help sponsor the new women's journal, A Circle of Women, with some of its remaining funds from this year's budget.
--Dan Treadaway