Aug 17, 2016 4 min read

Trinity High School students who drive to school this coming year will have to pony up $200 to park. That’s a 560 percent increase over the previous fee of $35.

What’s the reason for the whopping increase? District administrators want to expand and improve parking at the high school and think students should pay for it.

Michael Lucas, district superintendent, earlier this week said, “It was determined that the taxpayers are funding the bus transportation for $3 million a year and should not share the burden of the luxury for students to park their car on campus.”

For many older students who have jobs and extracurricular activities before and after school, taking the bus to and from school is not practical. For them, driving to school is a necessity, not a luxury, just as it is for teachers and administrators, who can park there for free.

We think this exorbitant fee is both counterproductive and unnecessary.

If the new revenue is used to expand student parking beyond the current 150 spaces, the new spaces may go unused because of the high parking fee. Students will still find places to park off campus, to the annoyance of residents in those neighborhoods. And the fee is bound to discourage students from taking after-school jobs or participating in extracurricular activities that are so beneficial to their education.

By unnecessary, we could say improved signs, security cameras, guardrails, better lighting and a walkway from student parking are things students and their taxpaying parents can do without. But there are other and better ways to pay for building improvement and maintenance without gouging students.

The increased parking fee will gain the district only $24,750 in additional revenue this school year – hardly enough to do much of the improvement imagined. However, Trinity has some extra money to play with now that its agreement with the Wild Things to play its baseball games at Consol Energy Park has come to an end.

It has come to light the district returned more than $280,000 in tax payments to the Wild Things over the past five years in return for the use of the park for home baseball games. The Wild Things’ ownership claims this was a tax abatement; the district insists it was a rental agreement.

The district decided essentially paying $65,000 a year for a place for its varsity team to play its games was too much and has not renewed the agreement. With 14 games last year, the cost to Trinity was about $4,600 a game – $4,100 more than other high schools were typically charged.

Tax abatements are common. Municipalities and school districts offer them to large businesses that can bring jobs and new development to the community. But such agreements normally have time limits; once businesses have a few years to establish themselves, they have to start paying taxes as everyone else does. Trinity started playing games at the stadium a dozen years ago. It’s under no obligation to keep giving those tax breaks.

There’s concern the baseball team will have nowhere to play its home games next spring, now that Washington & Jefferson College backed out of a deal to rent its field next to Consol Energy Park. Reportedly, the college was told if it signed the agreement with Trinity it would not be permitted to use the Wild Things’ parking lot.

But Trinity does have places it can use for home games, if it’s willing to lower its standards a bit. For example, the district has a field beside Trinity South Elementary School that will do. It’s not fancy, but money is tight and sacrifices need to be made.

Of course, the district could charge its baseball players $200 each to help rent a fancier field, but that wouldn’t be right, would it?