On Oct. 14, The Student Government Association held its first meeting of October, and the fourth meeting of the semester. The start of the meeting was used to discuss Parking and Transportation at Georgia State.
Top officials from the Atlanta Senate announced to The Signal on Oct. 11, that SGA and the Department of Parking and Transportation, reached a “historic agreement” regarding the current parking situations at Georgia State.
Vice President of Student Engagement, Michael Sanseviro, as well as representatives from Parking and Transportation, were in attendance during the Thursday afternoons meet.
This meeting portion was conducted to analyze the overall plan that Parking and Transportation have for the remainder of the 2021-22 term, and future years at Georgia State.
Speaker of the Atlanta Senate, Ira Livnat, opened the meeting with information that he had requested from Parking and Transportation, three months ago. Until the second week of October that SGA and Parking and Transportation saw eye to eye.
Ira gave thanks to the Vice President of the Atlanta Campus and President of SGA, Director of Student Life and SGA Advisor, Gail Sutton, Director of Parking, Alfred C. Austin IV, as well as Vice President of Finance, Brad Freeman, for their contribution to their historic accomplishment with the settlement between the parking department and the Student Government Association.
The Director of Parking and Transportation and the Vice President of Finance were next to speak after Livnat made his opening statement. They announced that the students whose budget card has been unavailable, are now available at the Parking and Transportation department.
The department mentioned that their newly developed parking system will give operational feedback to students via parking.gsu.edu, or via social media. Parking has also added an additional 50 security cameras throughout all of the university’s parking decks, for security purposes.
In the past, Parking and Transportation have partnered with other parking decks around Downtown. They have announced that they won’t consider this moving forward and that they will work as closely as possible with the remaining parking decks at Georgia State.
This will assure that these parking decks are in use by the university.
Another announcement the Director of Parking reported was Parking and Transportation will modify Red Lot. Red Lot is located outside of Center Parc Stadium, closest to Aspen Heights. They plan to consolidate the Blue Route to a new terminal there, streamlining the boarding and unboarding process.
Nearly 200 students will get a refund of $52.50. About $8,000 is the number of refunds being distributed back to these nearly 200 students. These were students that were on the waitlist for their budget cards.
$17,500 has been given to students for those who don’t have budget cards. For students who will get budget cards from the Parking and Transportation department will get 3 free parks.
T deck’s helix will no longer be the only entrance and exit for students who are parking with T deck. T deck is removing the barricade. Moving forward, this will allow students to use the 2-lane road inside of T deck.
In total, nearly $30,000 in refunds and discounts will be given back to students.
Before leaving the meeting, Parking and Transportation then opened the floor for questions and concerns regarding the current parking situations, and upcoming plans for student parking. These included relationships with Summerhill businesses and why half of blue lot has been fenced off.
