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We are writing as a coalition of workers and unions at Syracuse University called United Syracuse. Our coalition includes faculty, staff and a variety of workers in food service, facilities and other key functions crucial to the everyday operations and mission of the university.

When our coalition launched in late summer 2023, it was clear many workers across all departments were majorly concerned with the ever-increasing cost of parking for SU employees. Newly-hired faculty were shocked at how high parking costs were compared to other institutions, and lower-paid employees are forced to spend larger portions of their paychecks on parking costs. According to our calculations, we found that even for one of the most budget-friendly lots on campus, Manley North, parking costs have increased 72% since 2019.

Consequently, our coalition organized letters, public meetings and eventually, scheduled meetings with Pete Sala, SU vice president and chief facilities officer, and other staff members from Syracuse University Parking and Transportation Services to discuss our concerns. These meetings were helpful and addressed some of our concerns with shuttle services and other minor aspects of the parking situation. We believe that our efforts to highlight this issue and the undue burden it places on faculty and staff influenced the university’s decision to freeze parking rate increases for the 2024-25 year.

That said, our meetings with Parking and Transportation Services also revealed that the problem is also structural. Because Parking and Transportation Services has to finance most of its own operations, the high costs (of parking garages, for instance) require employees to pay high rates simply to keep their office afloat.

Parking and Transportation Services was also clear that more support from the central budget and administration would be the only long-term, sustainable solution to significantly lower employee costs on parking. As it currently stands, the parking system places the burden of higher parking costs on lower-paid employees by charging them a higher percentage of their yearly salary on average than higher-paid employees.

Additionally, Central Current data shows that those with the highest salaries pay an even smaller percentage of their income on parking. There are also no part-time permits available for adjunct faculty who, as contract employees, often earn an annual salary far below the lowest tier rate, causing an astronomical percentage of their wage to be spent on parking costs.

Even if parking rates were adjusted to be uniformly proportional to people’s salaries so that the lower-income employees paid the same percentage of their salary for parking as higher-income employees, the persistently high cost of parking would still be disproportionate to low-income employees. For example, it financially hurts an individual more to pay, say, 1.5% of a $30,000 salary than 1.5% of a $110,000 salary.

There are other institutions that appear to provide parking at more affordable rates and sometimes even for free. Although it may be introduced at a much smaller scale with fewer employees overall, it’s a point of contention that SUNY ESF somehow provides free parking to its employees while paying SU to rent out its lots.

Given this, we are writing to advocate for the central administration and budget staff to commit to and invest in a more affordable solution for SU employees. Given that parking is a necessity for the majority of SU employees, we think this is an urgent problem to address as soon as possible.

Nick Piato submitted this letter on behalf of United Syracuse and can be reached at nwpiato@syr.edu.

Published on November 18, 2024 at 10:58 pm