Panel will propose higher parking fines

Southeast Missouri State University students face higher fines and, at least for now, fewer free parking spaces around the River Campus.

Those are two on a list of recommendations being made by a committee appointed by Cape Girardeau City Council. The list, finished Wednesday, will be presented to the council Feb. 4.

The task force will recommend increasing parking fines to $25. If the ticket is unpaid after seven days, the fine rises to $35; after 30 days the fine will be $45. The parking fine increase would be applied throughout the city.

Other recommendations include replacing old parking restriction signs with new ones that state parking fines, increasing enforcement patrols, and painting curbs yellow in no-parking zones.

The changes will be reviewed in six months. If parking problems have continued, the task force will recommend creating residential parking districts in neighborhoods around Southeast's main campus and the River Campus.

Also at the Feb. 4 meeting, the university will ask the city to ban parking on Morgan Oak Street, between Lorimier and Fountain streets. Southeast Missouri State University public safety director Doug Richards said the space, when filled by as many as 11 cars, presents a hazard to pedestrians and blocks the view of the university's security cameras. He said cars parked along that street offer a place for people to hide. Richards told the task force Southeast will add more than 300 parking spaces near the River Campus this year.

None of the parking task force members expect all the problems to be eliminated.

"But hopefully, with the increased fines and putting up signs, it will decrease the problem," said Brooke Lockhart, a Southeast student on the parking task force. She also works part time at the university's public safety department.

The city's parking task force has been meeting regularly since October. The city council created the task force after councilman John Voss proposed raising parking fines from $10 to $50. Task force members are Richards; city planner Martha Brown; resident Kim Ferguson; city attorney Eric Cunningham; Lt. Mark Majoris of the Cape Girardeau Police Department; Chris Hutson, co-manager of Hutson's Fine Furniture; and Jodi Stahly, who lives on a street near Southeast.

Voss was pleased to learn of the recommendations. He said the temporary signs posted along residential streets adjacent to campus seem to have reduced some of the parking problems.

Once fines are increased and permanent signs are installed, he said, "hopefully the signs might persuade folks to consider the choices they are making."

Voss lives on a block of Alta Vista Drive where nearly 25 percent of all the city's parking tickets were written over the course of a year. Councilwoman Debra Tracy lives on Highland Drive, also near campus, where, despite a parking ban on one side of the street, she counted 20 unfamiliar cars Thursday afternoon. She compared the potential changes in parking rules to a chess game. The city and university must work together, she said, to let students know the parking expectations.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127