UConn Parking Services has issued over $966,000 in parking tickets during 2018. Photo by Michael McClellan / The Daily Campus.
University of Connecticut Parking Services issued just over $966,000 in parking tickets and fines over the course of 2018, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request found.
Colin McNeil, a 2019 UConn graduate from Andover, CT currently employed by the university’s Information Technology Services, sent the data to The Daily Campus after putting in an FOIA request.
McNeil had several questions about Parking Services policies and decided the best way to answer them was by collecting data, he said.
“Whether or not their bad reputation was deserved, I never felt they were transparent about what they did,” McNeil said. “For example, does appealing your ticket actually do anything? Do the luxury cars on campus get more tickets?”
By submitting a FOIA request, McNeil also found that only roughly 19% of tickets were appealed in 2018, but about 51% of those appeals were successful.
Also notable is that — of the 37,404 individual tickets written by Parking Services in 2018 — 8,868 (roughly 24%) were written on Mondays, the highest total of any of the seven days.
Roughly 10% of all tickets for 2018 were issued during the first week of classes. However, about 99% of those were warnings. This means that Parking Services surrenders roughly $70,000 in potential fines during the move-in days and syllabus week, McNeil said.
Dwight Atherton, director of Parking Services, declined to comment on the statistics.
Nick Smith is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at nicholas.h.smith@uconn.edu.
