The Gateway Community College garage will be closed on Saturdays until further notice, as a cost-saving measure.
Saturday classes at Gateway begin last week. Students in those classes can park free in the Temple Street Garage, next to the Gateway garage.
“We remain conscientious about using our resources wisely,” Gateway President Dorsey Kendrick said in a release. “And after assessing the situation, we concluded that this measure will yield significant savings with minimal inconvenience to our weekend students.”
Gateway expects the move to save about $20,000 per semester.
I think there needs to be a larger public discussion of the public resources being devoted to checking IDs and directing traffic arriving from the suburbs at the Gateway garage. The garage entrance was designed to be fully automated, with electronic card readers controlling the automated gates. Why is this equipment not being used? The personnel costs here are huge. If that cost cannot be avoided, it should be borne by the people actually creating the need (suburban drivers) rather than being spread across the Gateway student body and taxpayers in general.