Re: Should U.P. Charge to Park at Burleson?

We discussed this earlier in the month. Then I discovered this ordinance, signed by Blackie on January 19, 2010, addressing 6 of those parking spaces.

By Merritt Patterson Oct. 12, 2010 | 4:29 pm | 10 Comments | Comments RSS
10 comments to "Re: Should U.P. Charge to Park at Burleson?"
  1. Dewey @ October 12, 2010 at 8:13 pm
    Am I missing something?

  2. Avid Reader @ October 13, 2010 at 6:23 am
    Charge for all of them.

  3. Max Fuqua @ October 13, 2010 at 8:00 am
    The roughly 200 unmarked spaces around the park routinely taken up by SMU students/staff were brought to the Council’s attention by a member of the Parks committee. Council decided to mark 18 of them 2 hour in the hope that it would reserve some of those spaces for residents. Their action aknowledged that a serious problem exists at the park, however the time limit is routinely ignored and our city is understaffed in parking enforcement so the change has had very little effect. Better solution: parking meters that exempt residents, charge non-residents, use the revenue to hire more enforcement.

  4. Matt @ October 13, 2010 at 9:33 am
    I thought the City Council was going to have a committee work with SMU on alleviating the parking issue? Burleson parking is full daily, while the SMU lot across the street on University is rarely half full. It is not the younger university students parking at Burleson and adjacent streets, it is older students and/or SMU employees.

  5. Tr @ October 13, 2010 at 12:58 pm
    meanwhile, across the street on campus, should you over run your time at an SMU parking meter by more than a few milliseconds you’ll get a $25 ticket.

  6. UPDad @ October 13, 2010 at 1:07 pm
    Someone said this is not an SMU problem, but I beg to differ. The university can add all the parking spaces they want, but if they charge students to park there, they won’t. (Heck, SMU can even go so far as to force the city to change zoning to remove neighborhoods to add parking, but that’s a different issue.)

    Those of us who live near SMU are soon going to have to PAY to buy a parking permit to park in front of our own homes. That’s the city’s solution, and it doesn’t sound like a good one to me.

    SMU has a parking problem. They’re content to let it fall to the city to solve. The city leaders should finally step up and require SMU to clean up their problems and not leave it to us to bear the costs of hiring more parking enforcement.

  7. Bill @ October 13, 2010 at 2:14 pm
    Construction workers working on new buildings at SMU have been taking up many of those spaces at Burleson Park for a couple years.

    Also, some of the employees that work in the Physical Plant, Hughes Trigg Student Center and library lost their parking spaces when construction started west of Daniel. There were 40-50 spaces tucked in there among the old buildings that are no longer there.

    Usually do not see the scofflaw parkers till later in the school year. Those are students who for whatever reason have too many parking tickets on campus or owe large amounts of money. They park on campus and their vehicle will get the dreaded yellow boot.

    I live close to SMU and do not mind people parking on the street. Just part of living here. I do mind fans attending games, especially basketball games at night. They leave beer cans and urinate in the alleys and on sidewalks.

    The parking enforcement guy in the 3 wheeler does a good job. His job should be to keep everyone moving along, not punishing people for leaving their car for 5 minutes longer than they should. The students fear him and that’s all he needs to be a success.

  8. GMOM @ October 13, 2010 at 5:21 pm
    SMU is a BAD neighbor……………

  9. Max Fuqua @ October 14, 2010 at 8:06 am
    The parking spaces at Burleson are owned by UP tax payers. If we let non residents continually abuse them that is our own fault. It is a City of UP problem because we are not managing or leveraging our property as we should be in this case. We need more parking enforcement and a use fee from the school or meters for non residents would help finance that. I live 2 blocks from campus, and I think SMU is a great neighbor and an asset to the community. It does no one any good to demonize the school.

  10. UPDad @ October 15, 2010 at 12:20 pm
    SMU is a terrible neighbor. They promise, promise, promise, but the promises are typically changed or just ignored. They “promised” to have people out cleaning up trash after their football games when games returned to campus. That lasted about two games. Now I also pickup beer cans and sandwich wrappers every other Sunday. They buy neighboring properties and encourage their deterioration so that they can easily buy other nearby properties. Then they get them condemmed and force zoning changes (at the objection of ALL who live nearby) so they can use them for their original plans.

    You’re right Max that it is our own fault. But that fault is that we continue to elect pre-selected City Council members who are under the thumb of the rich donors to SMU, and therefore let this continue.

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