PULLMAN, Wash. — In order to cover the capital costs of the parking system at Washington State University, parking fees and fines on the Pullman campus will be going up beginning July 1.
The WSU Board of Regents approved increases for annual and daily parking permits and most fines at its March 15 meeting at WSU Tri Cities.
The Office of Business Affairs proposed the increases after a two-year review process that included an external review by a visiting peer review team and an internal review by a 15-member Parking System Review Task Force. The task force was designed to gather feedback from a wide cross-section of the campus and its members included undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and administrators.
Smaller increases are planned for parking zones used primarily by students and where demand is less, larger increases for high-demand parking zones and those used primarily by faculty and staff. No increases were proposed for parking meter or hourly garage rates. For a complete list of increases go to www.wsu.edu/parking/annual_rates and www.wsu.edu/parking/daily_rates.
Most parking fines are increasing by $5-25, depending on the infraction. Parking illegally in a disability space is increasing from $50 to $250, which coincides with the state standard. For a list of fine increases go to www.wsu.edu/parking/fine_prop.
The increases are needed to help cover the cost of new parking facilities and improvements and repairs to existing garages and parking lots. Those costs include an annual bond payment of $814,000 for the newly constructed Smith Center for Undergraduate Education garage and parking lot. Badly needed repairs to three of the university’s garages and deferred maintenance to other surface lots will cost $800,000 and $600,000, respectively. For a list of expected expenses go to www.wsu.edu/parking/exec_sum.
WSU employees will be able to mitigate some of the increases by opting to pay for their permit with pre-tax dollars through payroll deduction, which would save federal tax withholding, social security and Medicare expenses. For example, at a federal tax rate of 15 percent, an employee could save $22.65 for every $100 in parking fees. At that tax rate, an annual green parking permit would cost $220 instead of $285. For more information on pre-tax savings go to www.wsu.edu/parking/pre_tax_prop and www.wsu.edu/parking/pre_tax.
