PARKING PERMIT FEETS ON SEMO REGENTS' AGENDA

The Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents will consider adopting a new system of parking permit fees when it meets Friday.

The meeting will be held at 10 a.m. in the University Center Ballroom.

Newly appointed regents Don Dickerson and Patricia Washington are scheduled to be sworn in at the start of the meeting by Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Stanley Grimm. Dickerson is a Cape Girardeau attorney and Washington is a St. Louis newspaper editor.

The new regents will replace Carl Ben Bidewell of Poplar Bluff and Daniel Williams Jr. of St. Louis, whose terms have expired.

Regent Mark Pelts of Kennett described Friday's agenda as relatively light.

Observing that this will be the first meeting for the two new regents, Pelts said, "I guess it is kind of like a first date; you don't plan a lot of activities."

As to the parking fees, Southeast's administration wants to establish a differential fee structure, with students being charged higher fees for preferred parking as opposed to the perimeter lots.

"Right now, you just pay a fee and you can park in any student lot," said Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast.

The commuter-student fee is currently $35 a year. Residence-hall students now pay a $40-a-year parking fee.

Under the plan, students would pay $45 a year to park their cars in the outlying lots and $80 annually to park in preferred lots. Evening, part-time students, who currently are not charged a parking fee, would pay $20 a semester or $45 annually.

The increased revenue, said Wallhausen, would be used to operate a new shuttle system and to improve and maintain the parking lots.

Shuttle vans would provide students transportation to and from various campus parking lots. The idea is to encourage greater student use of parking lots on the perimeter of the campus, university officials said.

The transportation system, which would take effect this fall, is expected to cost more than $100,000 annually. That would include the already existing night shuttle.

Ken Dobbins, vice president for finance and administration at Southeast, said federal money would pay for about $40,000 to $50,000 of the cost, with the rest to come from the parking fees.

"The preferred (lots) students are paying a little bit more, but the spaces are closer to the academic buildings," said Dobbins.

"We are not going to oversell so those individuals would not have a space," he said.

Dobbins said that with the fee changes the university would be able to pave its gravel parking lots over the next several years.

He said it's important for the university to encourage greater use of the outlying parking areas. "When the business building is constructed, we will lose temporarily almost 400 slots so therefore we have to use our outlying parking areas.

"When you are forcing people to do that, in essence we have to have some way to get people into the center of campus," said Dobbins.

At Friday's meeting, the regents also are expected to officially confer degrees for the 1993 spring graduation class, approve the scope of the annual audit and audit fees, discuss a proposed gymnastics program and receive an update on the university's capital projects.