At its 4:30 p.m. meeting yesterday, the Student Government Association discussed the possibility of increasing the cost of parking decals. SGA vice president Nicole Perero said the amount of the increase has not been set, and it is still being discussed in hopes of getting more money for renovations to be done to parking lots and streets.

“I have had faculty and many students approach me about the parking. The parking fee increased three or four years ago and they have not seen much, or from what they have said they have not seen much done with the money that was allocated,” senator Matthew Ford said.

Brent Callais, SGA president, mentioned some of the parking places that have seen improvement.

The street in front of the union, the parking lot right behind the police station and the shell parking lot by the married student’s residence hall were funded with money from the parking decal fund, he said.

“I think if SGA decided to support the raise in parking permits, maybe we should make it more known to the students what was done with the parking money, run a few ads, publicize what the money did,” Deanna Duet, director of public relations said.

“I mean, if I was not in SGA, I would not know where that parking money went and how we got the parking lots.”

Alcie Maxwell, director of student rights and grievances, said the parking decals make about $150,000 for renovations to be done for parking areas and streets.

“The average cost of a parking project is about $225,000, so what we end up doing is sitting on money waiting for money to accumulate,” Maxwell said.

“You have two choices. You can either keep the parking decal cost at $25. Then you are going to have the parking lots and stuff on campus deteriorate, or you can increase the parking decal cost and have nice parking lots, but just complaints about the parking decal costs.”

Maxwell said he would rather pay the increase cost and have nice parking lots rather than have poor parking conditions that could cause damage to cars.

“What I would like to see personally, I would not mind the parking increase. A lot of other campuses have a lot higher parking than we do, and they have prioritized parking,” senator James Irwin said.

“Freshmen park over here in China, sophomores over here in Europe and, seniors, you can park right here in Louisiana.”

Irwin also said he would like to see more stipulations put on the current parking procedures.

“Students, you can’t park in faculty spots, but, faculty, you can’t park in students spots. That is what I would like to see I would support a parking increase if something like that were to happen,” he said.

Dr. Eugene Dial, vice president for student affairs, said educating the public would be beneficial to show what is being done with the money and how an increase could help.

“To [ show the students] with the current fee this is a list of what can be done in the next five years. If the fee were $25, $35, $40, this is what could be done,” he said.

“Just let people decide what they would like to see done in the next few years. Because, basically, whatever you shop for you have to have the money to pay for. So it is going to come down to a thing of educating the public, and let the community to make a choice.

Dial said to let the people decide if they are willing to settle for pot hole repairs when for a parking decal fee increase they could have nice streets and parking lots.