Officer Craig Ervin hits the streets in his heated 4-by-4 Club Car golfcart. After whipping out his handheld computer, he enters the license plate of an illegally parked car.
In a matter of minutes, justice has been served.
Ervin has been on the force for years, but has recently been assigned traffic enforcement as his sole duty.
Although parking is a headache for students at Fairfield, it is one of the greatest sources of income for the school, grossing $414,873 from parking last year.
MaryAnn DeMasi works at Public Safety as the operations assistant in charge of parking. She issues parking passes and inputs all of the tickets to the system.
She said that this money is collected through a combination of parking passes and parking violation tickets. It is used by Fairfield to repave roads, remove snow, and repaint parking lots.
There are more than 6,000 parking passes issued each year for full-time and part-time students. In addition, approximately 75 to 100 tickets are written each day.
“You have to keep in mind that not all of those tickets are collectible,” said DeMasi.
Many of the tickets are issued to unregistered guests, parents and town citizens and all of these tickets are voided if brought to Public Safety, DeMasi explained.
If students feel they were erroneously ticketed they can appeal the ticket to the judicial branch of FUSA. A panel of students affiliated with student court review the ticket appeals each Sunday.
Gregg Cerasuolo ’07, chief justice of student court, said that 10 to 15 tickets are appealed each week. Of those appeals, some are overturned.
“We evaluate each ticket on a case by case basis taking all circumstances into account. There is no typical number or percentage of tickets that gets overturned,” said Cerasuolo.
If a car is unregistered and receives five tickets it is put onto a list so that it receives an immobilizing boot.
Most of the students on the boot list are freshmen who will risk losing parking privileges for the future or seniors who live off-campus and are trying to go without paying for a parking pass, said DeMasi.
If a registered car is issued five or more tickets in one academic year, it is put onto a “tow list” that is updated each month.
“If a car is towed they have to pick it up and pay $77 cash in addition to the tickets they owe to Fairfield,” said DeMasi.
This may seem like a lot, but it is actually $50 lower than it has been in the past.
DeMasi researched towing companies in the area and was able to negotiate this low rate just this month.
But not everyone is upset by the number of tickets issued on-campus. Senior Cagney Ringnalda feels they are a necessary evil.
“I think it’s good that they give out so many tickets. Parking on campus would be worse than it already is if they didn’t give so many out,” she said.
Public Safety implemented a new way for writing tickets last spring according to Ficko.
Called METS, for Mobile Electronic Ticketing System, the system links directly to Fairfield’s Banner System for billing.
It also allows for improved record-tracking with the ability to e-mail students when they get a ticket.
“Officer Ervin writes the majority of the tickets issued at Fairfield, but he is not alone. All of the officers write tickets when they find a violation,” said DeMasi.
The amount earned through parking has only slightly increased in the past few years.
The past three years the amount earned from parking passes and tickets has been $391,393, $415,092, and $414,873 respectively in 2003, 2004, and 2005.
Bobby Cintolo ’07 said that, for the most part, parking isn’t as bad a situation this year in the Village where he lives, possibly as a result of Public Safety ticketing.
“It is OK, but not great. Whenever the Quick Center has an event it [parking] is just terrible,” said Cintolo.
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