transcript_genfac_03_26

Transcript General Faculty Meeting
March 26, 2019

Michael Baginski, Chair: First I’d like to welcome everybody to the March 26, 2019 General Faculty Meeting. We were expecting a much larger crowd but apparently they did not show up at least not yet.

There is no sign up sheet for the General Faculty Meeting. A quorum are those that attend the meeting. I now call the meeting to order. Thank you for coming today to the Spring General Faculty Meeting. I am Michael Baginski, University Senate Chair and also act as the chair of the General Faculty.

Our first task is to approve the minutes from the October 23, 2018 General Faculty meeting. Those minutes have been posted on the Web site, are there any changes, additions, corrections, to the minutes? Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve? (Yes) A second? (yes). All in favor (wide response) Opposed? (no response). Alright, thank you the minutes are approved.

I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for this meeting. If you’d like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone on either side aisle. When it is your turn, state your name and the unit you represent. I have only 2 brief remarks.

First, I’d like to welcome back our secretary, Beverly Marshall, who is experiencing remarkable recovery from her injury.
Second, I want to wish Coach Bruce Pearl the very best in the NCAA Basketball tournament. It’s been an incredible season already and Friday night should be even more interesting.

Now, President Steven Leath will update us on the strategic plan. [2:25]

Dr. Steven Leath, Auburn University President: Thanks, Michael. Actually what I am going to do is give some general comments on a number of topics and I’ll touch on the strategic plan of course, but if there’s questions, as usual I’d rather address things that interest the group rather than take a guess at them all.

I do appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s always good to be with faculty. I was with faculty for lunch today. One of my multi-faculty semester lunches, which I really do enjoy.
A few comments on the March 3 tornados, especially related to Auburn. A number of people in the Auburn family were seriously affected by that storm. Please keep them in your thoughts. I do want to let everyone know that we were engaged right away. Everything from the football team unloading water to our Veterinarians doing the undesirable things like euthanizing animals, but we have really rolled up our sleeves and gotten fully engaged. This is going to be a long process for a lot of Auburn folks. People will show up heavily in the beginning but we want to make sure that we are there in the long term. Steve Pelham, who’s chief of staff has been the point on this. His time in Montgomery has been invaluable in terms of giving us a cohesive organized effort in engaging State officials. So, we have plenty of resources, but we’ll continue to be on top of this.
One thing that came out of this storm from an administrative point of view is we are moving forward, at least in the short term, and instituted a new communities service leave policy. For people that want to take time off and go out and help storm victims or now the way the policy is written in a broader sense, help in the community, they can use community service leave rather than take a vacation day. That’s been well received and we think it helps embed us further into the community than even before. Service is one of our core values and now we are standing behind that with a policy in place that really enables faculty and staff to serve in this kind of capacity. We’ve had a lot of good meetings lately, we’ve had good support in this program and in general with our State and Federal lawmakers. We got relief quicker and faster and more generous than we’ve seen in a long time. So we are really pleased to see the response.
I was with Governor Ivey yesterday talking about university issues. We had a good visit, she understands us well. She is technically chair of our Board and to have an Auburn Alum in that position is very, very helpful. She cares deeply about this university and the progress we’re making to move it forward. [5:20]

Speaking of progress, I want to address some of our construction because a lot of you have seen it, Dan’s in the room. We have done a lot of construction for a long time before I got here. Our average is somewhere around 100 million, I believe 113 million a year over the last 10 years. Right now, we’ve made a lot of conscious decisions to move forward based on economics, our cash flow, the cost of these things. This year we asked for approval and received approval to do 232 million dollars in new construction. That is over twice the pace we are on. On a good note there will be some great facilities for our folks here on campus, in the short term there will be some pain as roads will close and some inconveniences, there’ll be some moving around of folks, but all in all whether it’s the culinary center, a new structural lab in Civil Engineering, or a new classroom building or new dining facility we will be way better off in a couple of years for this aggressive push. We ask for a little bit of patience, but the result here is it’s going to be really good.

Related to that we are also pleased to get a 43-million-dollar allocation from the Federal government to build a new Ag research lab here on campus. That was in cooperation with Senator Shelby and the Soil Dynamics Lab, we have a small unit right now on campus, but we will have a great state of the art facility. In the ideal world we will be able to partner and put some of our own faculty into this beautiful new research facility. And it keeps with our plan of growing research. I realize faculty are first and facilities are second, but still we want our good faculty to have the best facilities they can. So, we are moving forward on both of these. And we are trying to recruit 500 new tenure-track faculty. I think you know that promise Bill and I made. One of the keys to recruiting and keeping the faculty we have is good facilities.

Bill is on track, I think we will have about 100 new tenure track faculty this year and 65 non-tenure track, so the hiring push is going forward. You are going to see a much more comprehensive strategic marketing plan come out this fall. That has been intentionally delayed because we want to follow the strategic plan. Once the plan comes in place I will talk about that a little we will then go with a nation-wide-comprehensive plan as part of this faculty hiring push. I am pretty excited about that.

That segues into the strategic plan. I think most of you have had the opportunity to be involved and you certainly have the opportunity to read it on the Web right now. The big part of the plan is formulated and approved and out there. What we’re doing now is the part that’s the most meaningful to me and that is asking the units, deans and down, to go behind this plan and actually put metrics into deliverables behind it. What does it mean to grow research, to have a more robust research program (more faculty, increase in grants, increase in proposals, increase in wars, new facilities?). So, we are starting to drive the key performance indicators behind that.

Now, these will come out of all the units. Bill, as provost, is coordinating them all, but the expectation is whether it’s Student Affairs, whether it’s Teaching, whatever it is they will all come together, and we’ll have something that we can hold ourselves accountable against. Which I think is hugely important. I am glad to talk about that in more detail. Bill is here too if there are any specific questions on that. [8:55]
A couple of other things, I’ll also take questions on how we do admissions on this campus. I think everyone in academia has noticed the public relations disaster, well deserved, for the many institutions for the way they’ve done admissions and special admissions. I feel confident we are doing a good job here at Auburn. I made a number of changes in how we handle admissions and special admissions when I came here. So, for those of you that get quizzed in the grocery store and other places, I feel pretty comfortable about the way we are approaching things.

With that Michael, I am going to stop and let the group ask questions if they want. This is a chance for engagement. [9:40] Any questions?

Mike Stern, Economics: Will there be any more blocking of College Street?

Dr. Steven Leath, Auburn University President: Well we anticipate that the blocking of College will get better soon, but Ron, when you address parking here later, it you want to talk about any road closures or significant impacts, let us know. They are actually paving that section of College when I came back from lunch today. So, we’re moving forward. There will be some issues, for example, we are going to resurface the big parking lot by the Colliseum this summer and we’ll do it in sections but there will be a few days over the summer where certain parts won’t be available, but it will relatively quick and you’ll have a much better situation. But Ron if you take all that on when you are up here that would be great.

Other questions? Very good folks, thank you.
Michael Baginski, chair: Thank you President Leath. I did not see that coming, so few people and few questions.

Next, General Ron Burgess will update us on parking and hopefully we’ll get this overhead up.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Good afternoon. I think everybody showed up here about parking. I am here to discuss the new mandatory faculty PT programs (laughter) that we are going to implement to put forth a healthy lifestyle here at Auburn University. (joke)

I would add, by the way, a couple of things, and I’ll talk about road closures after I start on this. Some people know. Burgess was one of those folks that was in line with the tornado, we lost about a third of our house. We are getting the opportunity to excel, and I’ve got about 14 acres of trees that are every which way. The good news is today, out of the department of Civil Engineering, I volunteered my house to the College of Engineering who brought some of their folks out to use as a lab because evidently, I have one of the two newest houses out in Beauregard, so they are seeing how modern building construction standards actually do apply and are they good, bad, or indifferent. [12:28] So, I said, sure, come out and use me as a guinea pig all you want to. So they are out doing that and I also have asked the folks out at Forestry and Wildlife and they will come out to take a look at the tree side. It’s interesting as the tornado went through at 55 mph traveling with winds up to 175 mph that the trees you would think as a circular cone would do one thing, but it didn’t depending upon where you were in the path. They are using it as a study. If I can be a guinea pig, great, I just want to get back in my house at the end of the day, as my wife does.

Dr. Leath asked me to talk a little bit about road closures. This weekend you should have seen in the Auburn news there in front of the Auburn Hotel, we are actually going to flip it where we will close the road nearest to the Library and you will now travel with the two lanes that will be open closest to the Hotel. It will be ready for two-way traffic there as they now do some of that moving that they have to do. That is supposed to be all completed, it will be announced (in a perfect world if it happens) we will be opening that parking deck by Memorial Day. That’s what we’re looking for. All of that should be cleared. You’ve seen what’s going on South College that the city is doing with the islands that they want to put in. That is progressing, it is on the time line in about the same area.

What will occur this summer that will cause a little bit of a kerfuffle, as I call it, which we will deal with. At college where you go out from Samford Hall where you cross the street to the Hotel, the road will get torn up, you will still be able to use it, but we will tear the road up a little bit with the city because we are extending the university utilities across the street to the Hotel and to the new Rane Culinery Institute, so those academic buildings get to take advantage of our electrical grid off the university, which is cheaper than paying the commercial rate that you would do on the other side. We have to extend that. That will happen this summer and after that we should be reasonably good on College as far as I know. Dan, is there anything I haven’t thought of?

Dan King: The City, between Thach and Magnolia, is doing a lot of work.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Fair. If there are questions anymore on the roads Hit me (by e-mail), but I came here to talk about parking.

We are going to be doing some things on parking and I volunteered since it comes under my prevue to be the pincushion. I have already done Staff Council, I agreed to come in front of you all so you could take your best shots at me, then I meet with A&P coming up, and then I’m meeting with the students and the Student Government Association over in the Student Center so everybody gets a bit out of the apple to kind of know what our thinking is as we get ready to see what we are going to implement here it terms of it. With that could I get the first slide?

The bottom line up front, we’re trying to take a wholistic approach as we take a look at what it is we are going to do in terms of parking and transportation. As we lay out up here, when we first started out this path Dr. Leath looked at me and said “Ron, whatever you do, where ever you go you have to be able to show, one that if we are going to do something as far as fees (and we’ll get to that) people have to see that they are getting something for those dollars. They also have to see that there’s a process.

Now, I’ve got as much free time as anybody else. So, I sat down myself, I did not give it off to anybody else, I sat down at my computer and I sat there and I went across the SEC looking at our schools. I don’t understand this academic stuff in terms of near peer schools and all that other stuff. I did SEC schools first just to take a look to see where they were. The closest one that I could find to us was Mississippi State at $255 annually. And going as high in one place across the state was the most expensive place, at Alabama which is $660. Then I saw a novel approach at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt does it by pay bands, if you make more than $100,000 you are in pay band 3 for parking and it’s $80, a month. If you make more than $150,000 which is their top tier it’s $120/month. The bottom line is we are kind of out of whack, so, as I tell people when I am building the parking decks, well it’s not me it’s the university…as we are doing the parking deck across the street, those parking places cost $26,500 a piece when you cost it out. So, at $80 a year I would turn to my economics folks to tell me how long that takes to capitalize that. The bottom line is that we are all going to be dead before I can get the return on that. Even to do the Memorial Coliseum parking lot, which doesn’t necessarily affect all faculty. So, Dan, we’ve got to do it even though we drove through it the other day just to check it because we were getting reports that cars were disappearing in the potholes, but Dan’s got those fixed. Just to repave that parking lot is 3.5 million dollars. So, we are not going to ever take care of our parking on the backs of what we are going to charge, [18:46] we at least have to make a contribution, but this multifaceted approach wants to take that into account.

We also want to talk about, not this year, but we’re looking at and want to have a conversation about a demand management system in terms of that. I’ll show you what I am talking about in a map, where we are going to try to specifically help faculty in terms of where it is you are located to make the correlation of people to parking places a little better than what it is today. Improve the transit system that Don’s got where it can actually add to…say we go to a model like at Texas A&M where we build far out parking lots, I’ve got to have some way to get people there and what we are going to do and how that transit would work.

Here’s part of the problem with all of this, I’m standing in front of a group of academics that ought to be smarter than I am on a lot of this stuff. In my previous life I was sitting there trying to figure out how to take care of my 16,500 people that I had working for me in DC, where first of all the government told me I could only build one parking place for every 3 personnel. That was their way of ensuring that we use mass transit, which we don’t have here, but every study that I’ve had presented to me in my life tells me that in 20 years, 15 years, you’re going to own a car where you can sit there on your iWatch and your car is going to deliver you and your car is going to go to its parking place 15 miles away and you will code it to come back and pick you up at the same spot at 4:30 so you can go home. I have trouble. I am not the Jules Verne guy in the group, I have trouble seeing that, but all the experts tell me that’s where we’re going. So, I am going to pour all resources into this mode…I don’t know if that’s where we end up or not, so it becomes a delicate balance as we take a look at that.

Then the last one of course, aligning fees, as I’ve talked about with the cost of what it actually cost to put that together.

Here is what we think we are doing so far on parking places. We are increasing the spaces that are available out there. The new spaces that will be available this fall you see listed up there in terms of where they are going to be located. Some quadrants of campus as we call it as we break the campus out are in a little bit better shape than others and we are trying to address that. But overall, we have actually increased the net. You see since 2012 inventory is up 31%, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t find a parking place. I’ve got to get it better in terms of that. Our plan takes that into account where we have to keep increasing that.

If I step back and take a look, you all get a plus. Nobody is looking for a kudo from Burgess at the end of the day and it shouldn’t surprise anybody, but I’ve done my own statistical analysis, even though I was a poly-sci major here at Auburn, I am able to do that kind of thing and look at it. If I brake it out, generally speaking, during the time when students are in class, we give on the order of around 3,000 tickets out. Don has people going around doing their thing. 71-73 percent, shouldn’t be any surprise, are given against students that are taking your parking places and other staff parking places. Staff and faculty only account for about 3%. You all do reasonably well. Then the rest fall out of people that are visiting campus and other folks that are here that don’t really either know what to do, or don’t care, and they’re willing to get the ticket or hope they don’t get caught. Or as everybody says, like the kids are doing on social media, following it and saying you can park now at the Library parking deck, which I am told they do. We are going to keep working on that.

Things we are looking at. We have to do something about replacing the Library Parking Deck. There are thoughts that have not been approved by our Board in terms of what we might do in and around the area of the Library where we are thinking long term. It would require us, if we did some of those, to do something to the parking deck, but it doesn’t matter, the parking deck at the Library has to be replaced because of where its coming from in age standpoint. If we are going to replace it we might as well increase the capacity we have there as long as we don’t destroy the vision we are looking at in terms of what we want for that.

Off-campus spaces. I am having conversations with folks now in terms of what we can do not only with land that we control, but other things that we may take advantage of where we want to encourage folks to park away. But I am going to sit here and look at every one of you now and tell you that whether it be me or the vice president for student affairs, when I have some conversations with some parents and especially the moms, who their freshman or sophomore daughter, they are not real excited about them parking 3 miles away and getting on a bus at 11 o’clock at night and going to their dorm. It doesn’t excite some of them. Just as some of you want a parking place right outside the front door of the building that you work in. It all kind of flows together, but we are taking a look at what we can do.

We are going to be building some new residence halls on campus, that will cause a requirement to increase in terms of that. But what we’re looking at with the plan we have today, and that’s all it is, is a plan, even from my old days. All a plan is, is our best thoughts for today and a point of departure from today but we are looking down this path to where we can increase as you see there, we say 3400 new spaces, but look at what the net is that comes out of that, because every time we build something it takes some down. We take one step forward, we take 2 steps back.

Transit system. We’ve got some routes we are looking at. We’ll see what we want to do. Is it in the art of the possible that we might look at how we do a transit system where we work in conjunction with the city of Auburn? That’s not off the table either in terms of how we might do that. To work it where both can be taken care of. Extending the service hours might go with that. One of the things I’ve already done, which I’ve announced and don’t know if you all have heard, I personally went out on College and went out on Thach to watch what happens at the end of the day in terms of egress from campus. And ingress, because the policy that we have in place was that at 5 o’clock students could come on campus and it became a feeding frenzy as I watched. Folks trying to get out of here at the end of the day to go home and those trying to get onto campus (at the same time). I have already made the decision, briefed the president, following the end of this semester…I didn’t want to change it in mid-stream because of things set up with meetings and everything…at the end of this semester 15 May we will put it in place where that time will extend to 6 o’clock for staff and faculty before students can come on campus. That will really show its impact here next fall when we see what the effect of that may or may not be. I talk about that and then of course I always look at Don, what can we do working with first transit or whom ever, to become more efficient and effective in terms of what we’re doing? We are continually monitoring that.

I talked about a demand management system. High demand spaces are going to cost more in all likelihood. So, if you park close and I don’t want to give you a hunting license…I keep saying I, this isn’t about me, I am trying to make recommendations that I think benefit to where we need to go. Are we going to put up things like barriers where you may need a key or card to get through to get into that parking lot? That’s certainly something we take a look at. The bottom line is, those spaces that are in high demand are going to cost more. An example: we already made the decision… I want people to listen when I say what I am going to say. Those people that today have a reserved parking place, a dean, a president of the university, they already are going to pay more for that reserved slot. They are not going to pay the same as everybody else.
I’ve already have had people raise their hands and say good, “Can I buy one of those?” NO.
We are not increasing the reserved parking places, but those that already exist, if you get a spot that is yours, you are going to pay for it in terms of what you’re going to do on that.
The limit to store and charge vehicles we are working our way through that one. I really want to talk about the third bullet on there. It came to my attention as we were doing this that we actually are not equal in terms of all employees. We have some employees in the university that are not paying for parking. Everybody will be a contributor, whether it be, as an example our HR folks. Everybody knows where the old Bruno’s is out there. That parking lot was out there. They had not been contributing. That’s not a slam on them, it’s just the way things had been decided. The day’s going to come just like Coliseum parking lot when we will have to repave that lot. They need to be contributing. Everybody should be putting money into the till in terms of where things are going to go.
So that I am equal and honest, because I want to be transparent, the president has already hit me up and said, “Ron, does that really need to apply to those AU Employees for example that are county extension agents out in Geneva county?” Probably Not. Okay, so I want to be careful when I say all. [29:49] But 99% of the folks are going to feel equal pain in terms of this as we look at it, as that goes. Then increase enforcement, you see what we are going to do, and I’ve already told Don (Andrae) starting for next fall I’m increasing his budget to put more people on the clock to where we can enforce the full time from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. because right now we’ve run out of our 8-hour work day and people head off. We are going to increase that, so we have full time coverage, so it becomes a deterrent. Tied in with that, two things; we are also changing the policy on the $25 for a ticket. Your first one may be $25, your second and third and fourth will not be $25, it’s going to go up, so it becomes painful in terms of that. And we are also relooking the policy on, it takes 10 before you get your driving privileges on campus revoked, because we have some repeat offenders where, mom and dad are very generous, and they don’t really care how many tickets they get. We are taking a look at that to see what we can do.

So, in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, since I always sit at the top, and that’s where you ought to be, so what’s he saying, how does this apply to me? This is what we are looking at doing right now. Currently the proposal that I’m putting out there on the table is we are going to take, I already told you the review that I did as I said as I did my “Master’s thesis paragraph one the review of the literature” I sat there and I did my review and looked at all the different schools to see what they were charging and where and what they were doing. We are going to take ours and go for the faculty piece there from $80 to $160 and for the other from $40 to $80. Is that going to be the end state? I am not going to lie to you, I don’t think so. Do I know where it’s going to go? No. Am I the ultimate decision maker? No. I have a voice and I will put my thought forward on that. We are also increasing, didn’t put it in this slide because it doesn’t necessarily apply here. The one group of students that we’re hitting this next year are those that are commuters. We are also doubling theirs.

I am not increasing student parking this year because they are already at $180 on the student side of the house. And because, being transparent and brutally honest here, because we made a decision this year to where we’re going to recoup their charge fees off of their charge card, it was felt, at least by me, and I put it into the system saying we are already going to hit them where they have to pay the 3.5% on their credit card–is it 3.5 Kelley?– 2.85%, so I wasn’t going to say “oh by the way you’ve got to pay the 2.85% and I am going to increase your parking.” We decided to stair-step it. My plan, unless I get overruled, and right now in the room the only person that can overrule me sits right there (indicating the president of AU), is it would be my intent that next year you would not see an increase in your parking and next year is what I would look at what I would do to the students. I will attempt to stair-step it that way until we get to whatever the ultimate is going to be. Again, I don’t know where that is today, I can’t stand here and tell you that I know what that is.

I think that’s it. Questions? Comments? Give me your best shot. I see Mr. Stern standing up and I see my friend in the military standing up, so you all go ahead and have at it. [34:02]

Mike Stern, economics: You said that you studied this issue and you are going to double the prices here for next fall. Did you estimate what the elasticity of demand is for faculty parking spaces?
Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: In terms of how many we are going to have?

Mike Stern, economics: No, how sensitive is the demand for permits to the price? (pause) Well it’s highly inelastic, so we don’t expect a drop in demand, so this is just a tax, it doesn’t solve the problem. Which gets me to a further question, has historically parking been in a segregated budget?

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Up to now, no, it’s been handled out of the general fund. We are instituting that change this year.

Mike Stern, economics: Okay, so all monies collected from parking fines and everything else (parking related) will be in a segregated budget that can’t be spent on anything other than the supply of parking spaces?

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: That is the current plan that we are working with the CFO, yes. But again, I don’t think I will get to the point where parking and fines are going to pay for my requirements. I am still going to have to contribute out of the general fund at the end of the day.

Mike Stern, economics: Oh sure, it can be a benefit. The university subsidizes many benefits. I was just wondering since we are not going to solve this…I mean there are 2 ways to solve parking, right? You either decrease the quantity demanded, but if quantity demanded is highly inelastic then price does nothing, or you increase the supply. So, the question is how you will pay for that.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Right. An example of that Michael would be; so Burgess went to Auburn from ’70 to ’74, it was initially put to me, hey Burgess, why don’t we go back to the days when freshmen don’t get to bring cars to campus, cut the demand a little bit. That won’t fly. I don’t think the parents would stand for it and there are things we are still going to consider but whether or not they are reasonable comments or not, don’t know.

Mike Stern, economics: Let me encourage you to be efficient about it. Any parking spaces you consider high demand, I would suggest that you auction them, rather than use fixed prices.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: I like that idea. And you and I might have another conversation.

Mike Stern, economics: That will solve the excess demand instantly.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Trust me, I’ve already had folks tell me, as we’ve talked with the City of Auburn, an example would be as they were negotiating with us; two people have told me “I will pay $1,000 a year for a slot that I know is there.”

Mike Stern, economics: That’s right. And you have some reserved spots for deans and so forth. But again, if you have high demand slots where people will pay a lot then you can, of course, just auction it and it will take care of those people.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Bingo. [36:58] yes mam.

Vicky van Santen, Pathobiology: You know the other people talking, but you don’t really know me because I don’t usually use those services. I’ve been trying to contribute personally to the solution by biking almost every day.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: You’re the woman, good job.

Vicky van Santen, Pathobiology: I don’t know how many people are willing to do that, so one solution is to just keep building parking spaces, and it’s a very small minority that will try to contribute to the solution by not using the parking. I have also been paying for an A zone parking permit for the last 15 years just because, you know, it might be thunder and lightning, I might have to bring a lot of stuff. So, I do occasionally use parking, but I would urge you to consider some mechanism for people who are going to drive 20 times to campus during the year to not have to pay the $500–$600 or whatever it ends up being.

It might encourage more people to might not take up a parking space on a regular basis. It might not. How many people are willing to do that, but if you keep increasing the pricing, there may be more.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Yes mam, thank you.

Beth Schwartz, Biological Sciences: I question the idea that we can’t keep freshmen off campus from parking. That’s most universities. Most universities pay more for parking and most universities don’t let their freshmen park on campus. The demand is clearly higher than the number of spaces in the next few years and I’m happy to pay extra to have a space, but since fall, I pay for A zone parking and I am lucky if I get B zone when I get to work, and I am being displaced by undergraduates. I am happy to pay a higher price if I am going to get a spot next year.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Fair, and I think a better way for me to say what I said, because I don’t just disagree, I know from talking to parents’ groups that they don’t want to send their child to school without their car. Does their car have to be on campus? No. So, I mis -worded how I put that and that is actually being looked at.

Beth Schwartz, Biological Sciences: I understand that you probably hear from parents more than you hear from us.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: That’s an understatement.

Beth Schwartz, Biological Sciences: I want to make sure it’s understood that we need parking. When it comes to there’s more demand than there is spaces the hierarchy really should support very protected for faculty so that we can get there and teach our classes. [39:52]

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Fair, thank you.

Jim Witte, EFLT: You still want to do the mandatory PT thing right?

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: I’m all in.

Jim Witte, EFLT: You can do it.
Two points; one, sir do not loose site of the Vanderbilt model, where they are having people with low incomes paying lower prices for parking. We have people that work on this campus earning $20,000–25,000 a year. $80 a month is a lot higher percentage than those earning 70-, 80-, 90-thousand a year. So, one that Vandy model takes that into account, it may not solve our parking problem, but it helps solve a personnel problem. That’s an impression. Number two, don’t discount pasture parking. University of South Florida several years ago put parking out in the boondocks and arranged for a bus to come in, everybody had a coronary until they realized that pasture parking was cheaper than campus parking. The people with lower incomes paid a lower fee and had the inconvenience of riding a bus. Pasture parking at Auburn would be a heck of a culture shock, but so is everything else at Auburn, we are developing rapidly.

Ron Burgess, COO: I haven’t used the phrase pasture parking, but actually we are looking at that. If you take one of the far out slots, for you all it won’t apply, and I haven’t run this by the boss , I can get shot for this one, but it seems to me a way to encourage people to park far off. For example, especially from a staff standpoint that get paid hourly. If I force them to park out and take a 10 minute ride in and they have to wait for a bus to pick them up if there’s not one there, do I need to figure out some way to encourage that to give them 15– 30 minutes grace, whatever, absolutely if it will encourage them to free up a spot here and park in the hinterlands for those hourly paid. Everything’s on the table. If you’ve got ideas like that, please keep throwing them our way.

Mam?

Margaret Marshall, Writing: My question has to do with the ability to move cars during the day. Many of us work in more than one building or need to attend meetings. I think there may be some misinformation, but we’ve heard that the staff understood that we would be assigned to parking close to the building where we work and not be able to move during the day.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: So, what we have said, that’s one of the things that we have to work through with the demand system where, yes, when we break the university out into quadrants so to speak, and you had a blue zone which meant that you could park anywhere in there if you had some that took you over to an orange or a red, we have to figure a way in our process to allow for that. And the problem with that is with the number that we have it then changes where they would be moving to, and I really do want to get away, I had never heard it referred to until I got here, ya’ll have taught me, I am trying to figure out a way to get it away from a “hunting license,” where you actually have a slot.

Sir?

Mark Barnett, Civil Engineering: I’ll start by offering a couple of compliments, actually. I think it’s a great idea about not letting the students on (campus) until 6:00 p.m. I think that’s a great idea. I also wanted to compliment Don Andrae on parking services, he’s done a great job and very responsive, we had questions and suggestions…

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: How much did you pay him? (jokingly to Don Andrae)

Mark Barnett, Civil Engineering: (Laughing) Nothing, uh, I got a better parking space.

The money to parking. I think it’s fine to raise parking fees as long as that money actually goes to parking. It’s my understanding that in the past the university has been unwilling to commit that the additional money would actually go to parking. I think with the response that you got to “can I reserve a spot?” there are a lot of people willing to do that. I would certainly be willing to pay $100 a month or so if I had a reserved parking spot. I park in the toughest part of campus, the northeast quadrant, and just looking about, I am an engineer, not a traffic engineer, but just kind of looking around and thinking about the problem, It looks to me like one of the problems is we have too many people parking in that area of the campus that don’t need to park there. They are parking there for convenience. So, I wonder about the idea of zone parking where people could only park in certain zone that would kind of push them away from that area of campus. I understand that was one of the consultant’s conclusions. Are we going to go toward implementing that?

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Yes sir, we are looking at that. The zone, we are not looking at that for this fall, we are looking at that for the next year. [45:13]

Mark Barnett, Civil Engineering: Okay, I think that would be a lot of help. This is at least the second traffic study that’s been done since I’ve been here in 20 years, parking study rather. As far as I know the first time, nothing was actually implemented. So we paid people to do a study and nothing implemented. I think the zoned idea is a great idea and hope we move in that direction. Thank you for your help with this.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Thank you, sir.

Sir?

Tony Moss, Biological Sciences: As another cyclist, I am certain that making better accommodations and considerably more than for cyclists, enormously enriches the demand for parking around campus. If I could just make a simple point here. There’s a lot of concern about students traveling in, coming great distances from off campus. Do you know where those apartments and houses are longleaf drive. I used to own houses there and got rid of them because it was too much trouble, but at any rate, there are a lot of busses that go out there and students are sometimes slow coming in from there and other locations as well. If you take a bicycle and you don’t ride too hard and take it farely easy and use smart routes coming, and that’s where the problem is, is we need more of those well-designed routes around town. If you are working hand-in-hand with town council this is one way to get at it. If you can widen those roads, make the place a little more bicycle friendly, talk to some bicyclists, for instance what type of pavements work for bicyclists, how wide does it really need to be to have good/safe travel. Back to my point, if you actually ride a bicycle from those places that are pretty far away it’s 10 minutes from campus. 10 minutes, no waiting for busses, (some other comments off microphone), and you get a bit of exercise which is not bad either.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Thank you, sir. So, folks, oh, mam?

Beth Schwartz, Biological Sciences: I want to say thank you also for letting them (students) come in a little bit later in the evening at 6 p.m. However, they pretty well fill the parking lots, and I like to come to work at night and finish things that I didn’t get done during the day and I have a hard time getting to a parking space even if I want to park with…not even next to the Library, way back next to Comer and Upchurch. So could we possibly block off some spaces for faculty to come back and work at night. I know that may not be the most popular idea, but to be competitive in research I find it difficult to get my work done during the day and I need that time at night. My computer is better, my system is better, everything is better in my office, I would prefer to come back. Just sometimes it’s prohibitive.

Ron Burgess, Chief Operations Officer: Thank you.
Steven Leath, President: The faculty Senate leadership has brought that up to him. Mike himself brought it up.

Michael Baginski, Chair: This is a concern I hear from faculty a lot of times about the unavailable, there is zero parking near there building, especially women, and it becomes a hazardous thing in their minds to go about their business at night. Patricia Duffy was the first person to bring this to my attention and subsequently a lot of people in one way or another made me aware of that problem. Now clinical people, people that have projects that require them to come back at night, they enjoy coming back and have to in some senses and they would like to not worry about distant parking. I know President Leath has been made aware of this and at one time we did have parking spaces that were for faculty, unfortunately they were under-utilized according to Don Andrae. [49:36] so, they were taken away, but we’re going…I believe there is something in the works, I have not been updated on that.

Ron Burgess, COO: Do you remember the quote you gave me to use about this topic from the President of Southern California? Remember, I’m not the academic in the room.
What is the purpose of a university? the purpose of a university, according to this gentleman, I don’t remember his name, some re-nouned president from the University of Southern California, is to provide parties and athletic activities for the alumni, sex for students, and parking for faculty. As a military guy I found that a little interesting that that was the way academia was looked at, but okay, I can go with that.

So, anyway, thank you all, and I mean that. My e-mail, I am on the system [rlb0029@auburn.edu]. I’m serious, we really are looking for your input. I say this not with a tongue in cheek or anything else. Am I going to be able to make recommendations along with the senior team that scratches everybody’s itch and will have everybody rise up and call me blessed? The answer is absolutely not. We are going to do the best we can, we want to address those issues and we just want to make it better. That’s the guidance I’ve been given by the president. Thank you all for what you do and War Eagle.

Michael Baginski, Chair: One second. As far as the core of campus, this is a question I have from other people. Are there going to be any significant number of added new spaces next year when we pay this increase in amount?

Ron Burgess, COO: To the core of campus.

Don Andrae, Dir. of Transportation Services: Lowder will have more spaces.

Michael Baginski, Chair: What about the spaces adjacent to, on the other side of the Hotel?

Don Andrae, Dir. of Transportation Services: The Hotel deck will add 200.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Well, wondering about spaces where the core would benefit greatly

Steven Leath, president: I think it was about 300 between Lowder and the parking deck.

Michael Baginski, Chair: I think some people don’t know that.

Ron Burgess, COO: To reason I am tentative in saying any ideas that we have to make additions on the parking require a capital infrastructure project and anything that goes over 1 million dollars we have to get approval to move forward with. I haven’t seen a single parking project yet that won’t require that amount of investment. There’s a process that I have to go through, so, I never like to stand if front of people and make promises that I don’t have the ability to keep. We have all of these, we are going to push ideas forward and we will see where the ideas go. I am serious, reach out to me. If you really feel strongly about it and want to come see me, I’d be happy to have a conversation. Thank you all for what you do.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you General Burgess.

We just had Senate elections so Nedret Billor, the chair-elect is going to announce the results.

Nedret Billor, chair-elect: Good afternoon, here are the results: chair-elect, Donald Mulvaney from the department of animal sciences, College of Agriculture, and secretary-elect, Greg Schmidt from Auburn University Libraries. Congratulations. (applause)

Michael Baginski, Chair: This concludes our formal agenda for today.

Is there any unfinished business? Pause …Hearing none, is there any new business? …Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [54:03]