MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

BY JOSH STONE, CAPP

Happy summer, everyone! I hope you're having a wonderful summer, making the most of quality time with loved ones and exploring the beauty of Virginia and its surroundings As for P&T, we've been keeping ourselves occupied since our last newsletter in April However, with the students on summer break and fewer events at the Altria Theatre, things have eased up a bit

First up is the response from IPMI on our accreditation submission. My last letter stated that we felt we met all required criteria and over 90% of the remaining criteria. You heard from me in April announcing that IPMI agreed and we are officially an accredited parking organization with distinctionputting VCU in the top 10% of parking organizations in the country Our accreditation is good through 2026 when we will need to recertify This is a wonderful accomplishment and one we should all be proud of

We have been actively engaged in construction at both the Henry St Decks and the Laurel St Deck This construction was prompted by our 2018 deck assessments, which revealed the need for necessary work on the last three decks In total, we invested approximately $2 million in these three decks to address issues such as crack repair and concrete spalling, among other improvements As of this writing, the Laurel St Deck has already reopened, as has one Henry St Deck The other is expected to be open by August 1

Our progress with LED lighting and camera installations in our decks is going well Both projects are on track, and we expect to complete them in late fall or early spring However, the license plate recognition implementation has faced some challenges, causing us to miss the initial August 1 deadline I set We encountered IT-related issues, but we are actively working to resolve them We have informed the campus community that our new go-live date for the license plate recognition system is now January 8, 2024 In the meantime, we will continue to use hangtags for one more semester We are considering a soft launch in the fall, and I will provide further details during our upcoming all-staff meeting.

During the spring semester, we conducted our internal audit, participating in several meetings and providing various details to the auditor. The good news is that the findings were not unexpected, and this audit went much better than the one in 2017/2018. The main issue identified was non-compliance with the "Virginia Debt Collection Act " which obliges us to make an effort to collect citation debt While I wasn't aware of this act's requirement, we had already planned to address it this year Our next step is to work on developing a collections policy throughout the early fall, with the goal of implementing it within a year

We continue to strive to have a full staff heading into the fall semester We are in the recruitment or hiring process for an ESO Supervisor, two full-time ESOs, two part-time ESOs, and a Special Event Supervisor We hope to have several of these filled by the start of the fall semester

Our next all-staff meeting will take place on August 8 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Grace & Broad Residence Center in the Innovation Center. We’ve been in this room before We will have food and beverages available for this required staff meeting I look forward to seeing you all then!

Remember, my door is always open should you need anything