Dear Editor,
Clearly, educational successes of Kansas State University students are going to be affected by the university parking problems, and with the increased number of students having cars, this problem becomes especially essential. The current size of the university parking and the current university parking system frequently deny students’ access to the territory of the parking and force most of us to look for parking spots in public parking and to pay additional money. The suggested by specialists regulation of the university parking will lead to the increase in parking prices: the price will increase from $445 to $600 for Garage Preferred Stalls, from $600 to $900 for Garage Reserved Stalls, and to $20 for After Hours Garage Access. Furthermore, the regulation of the university parking suggests the $35 fine for the violation of each five parking rules. At the moment, lots of students are forced to violate parking rules due to lack of parking spots. Seems that the improvement in prices would reduce the number of cars in the university parking, but what should the students who are not able to pay much do? The specialists suggest the increased number of buses, but it is often better to drive your own car, and going to the University by bus is not the dream issue. Furthermore, the specialists suggest a reconstruction of the university parking and its expansion. According to the predictions, the estimated costs of the reconstruction will be $108,400 in 2015-2016 years, $3,978,200 in 2016-2017 years, and $14,200,000 beyond 2017 including $1,100,000 for the expansion of parking lots and $13,100,000 for the construction of the new garage. How big are these sums of money for the Kansas State University budget? And what about the Manhattan budget?
The failures of the Kansas State University parking seem to be the result of budget cuts and lack of money in the University’s budget. The 2016 Manhattan budget is $138,088,469 in total with $29,826,773 in General Fund and $45,630,141 in Special Revenue Funds. I believe that the local authorities are able to earmark the currently necessary sums of money for the reconstruction of the Kansas State University parking. You can check it by yourself: all the provided information can be found on the Internet on the webpage of Kansas State University Parking and on the webpage of the Manhattan official website. Kansas State University is the main higher educational establishment of our city, and the maintenance of its prestige and authority should be one of the primary issues of the Manhattan authorities. The investments to the solution of the university parking issues would be able to be compensated with the educational discipline and educational successes of students. Furthermore, I strongly believe that Kansas State University would be able to redistribute its budget in order to earmark more money for the solution of the parking problem. The university is the place for high education, and students should not waste a lot of time for finding the spots for their cars.
I hope that my letter is enough convinced to attract your attention and attention of your readers to the stated problem.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Sincerely yours,
CH
