GCC proposes fee hike to pay for parking garage

If a proposed facility fee is approved by the General Assembly, students at Germanna Community College will be paying extra to fund a three-story parking garage slated for the Fredericksburg campus.

The proposal calls for an extra $5.50 per credit hour starting this fall. It amounts to an additional $82.50 per semester for a student taking 15 credit hours, or $165 per year, according to Mike Zitz, director of media and community relations at GCC.

The state legislature will likely vote on the increase in March.

The tuition rate for in-state students starts at $109.75 per credit and $303.35 for out-of-state students.

Zitz said the Fredericksburg campus had 4,189 credit students during the 2010 fall semester.

“These are the students directly affected by the parking fee increase,” Zitz said. Another 1,400 non-credit students also used the facilities last semester.

Additionally, about 330 full- and part-time employees also use the parking spaces.

The estimated $6.2 million parking garage will feature 350 new spaces located behind the new facility. The Fredericksburg campus currently has 1,079 spaces.

Germanna President David Sam said that because Virginia colleges and universities are not allowed to pay for parking decks and student centers with state funding or tuition, many have implemented a facility development fee to build and maintain those structures.

The Fredericksburg area campus, Sam said, “has maximized the use of surface parking and now has to move toward multi-level decks to meet the increased use. This new fee will allow the college to borrow against past, current and projected revenues in order to build the parking deck. It may also be used in the future for other parking decks and student centers at any of our current or future sites.”

Zitz added that funds from the facilities fee would be placed in a separate account designated for the parking garage, maintenance and other operating costs.

After funding the parking garage, the facilities fees would help pay for other projects such as parking lots, new sidewalks, recreation facilities, performing arts buildings, outdoor lighting and other similar spaces that are not covered by state appropriations.

Zitz said that while planning the new $25.5 million, 50,000-square-foot third building for the Fredericksburg campus, GCC officials hired an architectural firm to update the school’s master plan. The recommendations included a new parking deck.

Germanna officials broke ground on Phase III (or the third building) on its Fredericksburg campus Jan. 28 and expect construction to start Tuesday.

A construction date for the parking garage has not been set.