The Forest Grove Police Department issued a statement to Pacific University students and community members announcing that it would begin regular enforcement of timed parking areas around Pacific and surrounding streets Jan. 11.
The department said a parking enforcement officer will patrol the campus perimeter at random and issue citations to individuals parked too long in the designated 2-hour and 4-hour zones.
Streets adjacent to Pacific that will be under patrol are both sides of Pacific Avenue between Cedar, Ash Street and College Way.
Community Outreach Specialist and Pacific alumna Lauren Quinsland ’04 said the police department decided to crack down on parking in response to several complaints from business owners, saying students parking all day were affecting traffic to their businesses.
“We don’t want to penalize students,” Quinsland said. “We know there aren’t enough parking spaces here and it spills out into the community but we need students to understand that what they do impacts Forest Grove.”
Quinsland acknowledged there is a parking inadequacy for Pacific students and said she remembers the situation being the same when she was an undergraduate student. She said she hopes students getting tickets and complaining to the university will encourage action to be taken.
“It’s not for [the police department] to say that Pacific needs more parking,” Quinsland said. “The hope is that when students get citations, they will go to the university and it will push for a change.”
Quinsland said part of why parking has not been enforced as much in the past, particularly in the fall semester, was because the police department didn’t have someone whose specific job was to elicit tickets.
As the Community Outreach Specialist, Quinsland said issuing parking citations is part of her job, as well as public relations, programming and crime prevention.
One day a week, Quinsland will go through campus and give out tickets. She said it will be random because her schedule is random.
Quinsland said the police department wants to make sure to get the word out to students because she is going to hit parking hard beginning spring term.
She added that simply moving a car from one space to the other in the same lot will still warrant a ticket and that individuals must completely vacate the lot to avoid being issued a citation.
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