‘Solutions’ would restrict parking
Neighborhood planning moves forward without student input
By ZACH KOBRINSKY   Staff Writer

    Moorhead city officials have been working to improve housing and parking near the MSUM and Concordia cam­puses since June of 2006.

   Now, many students are outraged by some of the city’s proposed implementations.

According to the Moorhead Neighborhood Planning Parking Implementation Strategies, the streets in the immediate campus area are cluttered by student parking.

A number of solutions are being proposed by the city:

   One possible solution is to require residents living in the area to use a parking per­mit to park on the street, at a $10 annual fee. Those caught parking on the street without a resident’s permit would be subject to a $40 fine from the city.

   Another solution is to intro­duce metered parking on the streets in question. Regarding to this proposition, MSUM junior Katie Walker said, “As college students, we have to use our quarters for laundry, and (instead) we’ll have to be using them for parking, so that’s not going to be very fun.”

The solution that would have the most drastic impact on residents would be reduc­ing the number of allowable unrelated tenants from four to three, to make more parking spaces on the streets.

Implementing this solution would create a necessity for 100 new housing units, and would also make rent more expensive for those who split the cost with roommates.

Another potential impact of this proposal would be, according to the Parking Implementation Strategies, “that some single-family units currently being rented become non-conforming and risk los­ing their rental license.”

Also, there were some other possibilities briefly mentioned in the city’s outline.

People Escaping Poverty Project (PEPP) Community Organizer Octavio Gomez said that 50 percent of Moorhead college students actually live in Fargo.

Gomez said, “Fargo … is growing. They’ve figured something out in the hous­ing market that Moorhead still hasn’t caught on to. And that is—build places that people want to live.

“It’s just that simple, and Moorhead hasn’t really been keeping up with building places that people want to live or making it so that people want to continue to live in Moorhead. But, then they go and blame it on parking.”

To address students’ con­cerns over these implications, PEPP organized a meeting on Tuesday evening. The meet­ing was well attended and full of the energy of concerned students.

First on the meeting’s agen­da was student representation on the matter, or lack thereof, according to attendants.

In the early phases of the project, a working group was created to represent the com­munity. The group included: 21 neighborhood residents, five university or college fac­ulty members, one university student and seven others.

Students present at Tuesday’s meeting were upset that their entire demographic was being represented by one person, even if that person was a student body president at the time of the working group. Even more upsetting to the students was that the presentation created by city officials said things like:

“Student representatives from both the college and the university will be part of the working group.”

“Communication and work­ing relationships between the city and the college or univer­sity are critical and must be ongoing.”

Some of Moorhead’s market research on the area suggests that roughly 2,250 students live within three blocks of their respective campuses.

When the city held its open house to propose these ideas to the working group, student attendance was documented at zero. Now in the project’s final stages, student represen­tation remains minimal.

Moorhead Neighborhood Services Manager Lisa Vatnsdal said the city encour­ages student participation. She also reiterated that the pro­posed housing and parking implementations are merely proposals at this point.

Another concern was the city’s justification for requir­ing a change in parking policy. The previously mentioned pre­sentation, which can be found on the city of Moorhead’s Web site, said that street parking has a “detrimental effect on property values.”

Market reports say that aver­age sale prices for single-fami­ly detached homes are increas­ing at an average of 4.9 per­cent in north Moorhead, and 4 percent in South Moorhead.

Compare that with 3.5 per­cent in north Fargo, which is home to the NDSU campus. PEPP meeting attendants seemed to disagree with the presentation’s statement about property values.

“The process is really about how to maintain some resi­dential character of this neigh­borhood,” Vatnsdal said. “Students are very welcome. It’s more of an issue of main­taining a balance, and toler­ance, and respect.”

“I think that the city would be willing to listen because the students already contribute so much to the community here,” Walker said. “I think we’re a really large voice if we actual­ly stand up and get our voice out there.”

There will be a follow-up meeting this Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the PEPP building, 116 12th St. S. in Moorhead.

PEPP invites any students interested to participate. For more information, visit www.pepp.org.
Kobrinsky can be reached at zach@hpr1.com