Trustees seek balance in parking efficiency

Ivy Tech student Ian Marshall sat in a ticketing booth, reading from his laptop as cars drove in and out of the Henderson Parking Garage.

Marshall performs his job by giving out parking permits, taking care of violations and stopping cars from parking illegally in the garages.

He said this job has been his only source of income for five years.

Marshall is one of 56 full-time parking operations employees across the
IU-Bloomington and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis campuses.

At the October Board of Trustees meeting, the board voted not to privatize IU’s parking operations.

Even though Chief Financial Officer MaryFrances McCourt recommended keeping IU’s parking operations internal, privatization is not completely off the table.

If McCourt’s business plan for maintaining operations is not approved in February, the Board may ask her to reconsider privatized parking, Trustee Randall Tobias said at the October Board of Trustees meeting.

The increasing financial stresses of higher education combined with recommendations from external experts prompted the discussion of outsourcing IU Parking Operations 18 months ago, McCourt said.

“We’re always looking for new ideas,” McCourt said. “We’re always looking to be more efficient.”

McCourt’s committee is just now starting to work on the business plan. Although they have not yet discussed plan specifics, including employee wages and permit costs, McCourt said they will focus efforts on finding ways to increase efficiencies.

By combining purchasing contracts across campuses, finding better ways to use technology and optimizing staffing levels, efficiency could be improved, McCourt said.   
McCourt said she will leverage the strengths of all seven campuses in her plan.

IU Parking Operations employs between 45 and 50 full- and part-time staff on the Bloomington campus, some of whom are students, IU Parking Manager Doug Porter said.

“We’ve got to look around to see if the ways we do things can be coordinated better,” Porter said.

Combining parking permit and computer services with IUPUI could decrease costs, Porter said. 

The idea for outsourcing has been an ongoing discussion as IU attempts to find more money, said Trustee William Cast in 2007, when the Board considered proposals to outsource IU Bookstores, IU Motor Pool and Residential Programs and Services. In February of 2007, the Board signed off on outsourcing IU Motor Pool’s daily rental car operations to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, eliminating four of 21 positions, three of which were full-time. IU regained control of Motor Pool operations shortly after.

Later that year on July 1, IU Bookstores were outsourced to Barnes and Noble, which hired all former IU Bookstore employees. IU Bookstores are still operated by Barnes and Noble.

The Board of Trustees considered proposals to outsource RPS dining operations that spring but decided to maintain operations.

Efforts to outsource several operations in 2007 met student, faculty and staff protest and resulted in campaigns to keep some operations internal.

Ohio State University is the only large public university that has outsourced parking.
OSU outsourced its parking operations to CampusPark in September, receiving an up-front payment of $483 million which went directly into its endowment fund, according to the OSU website.

OSU may have served as a model for IU, Porter said.

“Their concessionaire stated that they would interview everybody who was currently employed for possible future employment,” Porter said. “I’m assuming that something similar would have happened here.” 

While OSU yielded up-front cash to offset decreased state funding, privatization has hindered its quality of parking, said Ed Vasquez, president of Communication Workers of America 4730.

“Despite outrage and no one wanting it, they pushed it forward,” Vasquez said. “Services went down and prices went up ... I hope the trustees learned from that.”
IU’s outsourcing initiatives are the result of reduced state funding and a private sector ideology, Vasquez said.

“You shouldn’t make these decisions based on the ideology that the private market is better than what we have down here at IU,” Vasquez said. “This endeavor was not a very constructive one in the pursuit of privatization because parking is doing an efficient job. There’s no reason to look it over.”

Vasquez said he thinks IU Parking Operations already has to make do with less.   
“Already, parking services are almost cut to the bone,” Vasquez said. “A lot of parking employees are overworked. To have that pressure looming that you might lose your job, it’s very unnerving for those employees.”

It is difficult to assess University parking needs 50 years from now, Porter said. Maintaining parking operations provides IU flexibility to adapt to changing times, he said. 

“We talk a lot about the money side of it,” Porter said. “There’s also the service side. People have to decide what they’re giving up if they’re giving up control of the
assets”

Follow reporter Hannah Alani on Twitter @hannahalani.