The cost of access to MHCC education

With parking permits and lines at the kiosks a thing of the past, the MHCC administration has instead made it universal for all students to pay to be on campus.

As many of you know, the administration has tacked on the Access Fee in place of the Parking Permit Fee from last year. This move makes it mandatory for all students to pay, not just those parking on campus. The Advocate lauds this action, but wonders why it has taken the administration so long to make this change.

Now, before you start heating up the tar and gathering the feathers to come after us for supporting a fee, let us explain why we champion the Access Fee.
According to the MHCC website, the Access Fee was chosen to replace the Parking Permit Fee for two reasons: it’s a more convenient method for students to pay a fee and that the $35 Access Fee will raise more money than the $25 Parking Permit Fee.

In the proposal for the Access Fee from last year’s budget development, the projected net revenue would be between $615,000-$ 1.3 million. The gross revenue projections for the Parking Permit Fee showed $450,000 with $44,000 in projected net revenue. Jennifer Dement, director of finance & budget, said of the parking permit fee, “I don’t think we were really generating revenue at all.
“Clearly, not as many students bought the permits. I think they (the administration) thought 80 percent of students would buy the permits, but people were parking at the theater or they were parking on campus with no permit and just winging it and if they got caught, they would only have to pay the day permit,” she added.

The implementation of the parking permit fee, which was more than $400,000 according to Dement, included signage and parking permit fee kiosks.

According to the MHCC website, the kiosks are considering to be repurposed into electronic directions and the signs are going to be repurposed into wayfinding signs to help navigation on campus.

According to Director of Safety & Security Gale Blessing, the Access Fee is instead added on to the bill of every student enrolled for credit classes at MHCC, whether they’re on campus or taking online classes.

The reason The Advocate supports the Access Fee is that if students are going to be charged for being on campus, the administration ought to charge all students equally. With the Parking Permit Fee last year, many students were able to dodge paying the fee by parking for free on 17th Street or in the business parking lots across from campus.

So, the lackluster performance of the Parking Permit Fee led to a $10 increase in fees. According to the proposal for the Access Fee from last year’s budget development, the revenue of the fee is supposed to broken down into several areas: $60,000 would be used for four more part-time Public Safety Officers on patrol in the parking lots to cut down on crime; $45,000 for more surveillance cameras; $5,500 for more biking-related equipment on campus such as more locks and racks; and also to subsidize TriMet monthly passes by 10 percent for students, using approximately $ 4,500.

According to Dement, the rest of the revenue will go into the General Fund and be used to support other areas of campus such as infrastructure projects and increased security for online students.

We support the administration’s decision to implement this fee. However we believe the Access Fee would’ve been more effective last year than having the Parking Permit Fee and having to now try and make up for that fee’s less than marvelous performance.

The Administration has taken steps in the right direction. We just hope that this experiment fares better than the parking permits that can still be seen swinging on some cars like pendulous relics of a defunct system.