Legislature looks at bill that may add transportation fees to tuition

Nick Alford–The Corsair

Students at PJC have to pay sev­eral fees per credit hour to attend classes at this school. Including activity fees, financial aid fees, technology fees and a few others, the list seems to go on and on, and could add up to a costly semester for tuition.

The Florida legislature will deliberate in March to decide whether or not to give community colleges permission to add a new fee: a transportation fee. The bill has been sponsored by a member of the House and the Senate, and if passed, will authorize the board of trustees to assess an additional six dollars per credit hour, and provide a timeline for the fee to increase. All schools that decide to implement this policy will give students access to a free bus pass that would be good over the dura­tion of the semester.

“This bill got past the legisla­ture before, but it was vetoed by the governor,” said Larry Bracken, executive director of government relations for PJC. “The governor didn’t see why a fee would be implemented that not all students would benefit [from].”

The idea behind the bill, accord­ing to Bracken, would be to help students with gas, and free up more parking places at the schools. But, he says, PJC won’t implement the policy if it’s decided that it wouldn’t be in the best interests of all the students at PJC.

Nancy Lohr, director of Mar­keting and Communications at Escambia County Area Transit (ECAT), seemed very interested in the bill.

“We already have plans to extend service out to Milton Campus,” said Lohr. “The additional income from the bill could help us to im­prove our bus system to cater fur­ther to PJC students.”

ECAT already provides a trolley service for students at University of West Florida, which has imple­mented a similar program. Cur­rently, there is no bus service to the PJC Milton campus. Until there is, according to Bracken, PJC will not pursue the possibility of assessing the fee.

“We will most likely send out a survey via Pirate-Mail,” said Bracken, “We would want to make sure that the majority of the students want to take advantage of this because, after all, we are only here for the benefit of the stu­dents.”

Students attending some state universities, like University of Florida already pay a transporta­tion fee, and according to Sena­tor Oelrich, who sponsored this bill (SB 208), all students would benefit from this policy whether or not they decided to take the bus to school.

According to a bill analysis writ­ten by Oelrich and his staff, the benefits of the bill would also be extended to driving students through the reduction of traffic and the opening up of more park­ing spaces on the campuses.