Brown and White Vol. 135 no. 6

              The Brown and White Vol. 135 No. 6
Tuesday, September 25, 2018 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Ziyi Zhuang/B&W Staff
This fall, Lehigh University proposed a new parking plan called “Connections.” The plan involves spanning faculty and staff
parking across Asa Packer, Mountaintop and Goodman campuses and pricing the permits accordingly.
By MARISSA MCCLOY
News Editor
The new “Connections” parking
and transportation plan proposes
to spread faculty and staff parking
across the Asa Packer, Mountaintop
and Goodman campuses and enhance
the campus transportation system.
The plan was presented by Brent
Stringfellow, an associate vice presi-dent
of facilities and university archi-tect,
and Mark Ironside, the execu-tive
director of University Business
Services, at the Sept. 7 Faculty
Senate meeting. The plan was shared
with all staff via email on Sept. 10.
Under the Connections plan, the
price of a permit is determined by
parking location. Permits for all Asa
Packer and South Side campus park-ing
zones will cost $500 per year.
Parking on Mountaintop campus,
Upper Residential, 125 Goodman,
126 Goodman, Goodman Lot E and
Saucon Village Day Care will cost
faculty and staff $250 per year.
Parking in the Goodman campus and
Northside commuter lots will be free.
The plan attempts to compensate
for this increased cost with a $250
salary increase for all faculty and
staff on July 1, 2019, when the plan
goes into effect.
The location-based parking selec-tion
process will begin on or around
April 1, 2019, the plan states.
With parking dispersed across
three campuses, the university will
implement a new transit schedule and
will increase the number of Campus
Connector buses from three to five
vehicles. The buses will also stop
more frequently, as the Connections
plan states that the average time
between Campus Connectors during
peak hours will improve from approx-imately
20 minutes to 10 minutes.
The plan also introduces AccessLU,
a new bus service for faculty and staff
with accessibility limitations, which
will operate from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Monday through Friday and from 10
a.m. to 10 p.m. on the weekend.
Breena Holland, a professor of
political science, said her primary
concern with the new plan is tied to
salary.
“The new plan proposes three dif-ferent
tiers of parking price,” she
said. “It costs everybody the same to
get into tiers, which raises huge equi-ty
problems. The (new plan) creates a
class-based parking system.”
Al Wurth, a professor of political
science, agrees that Connections pro-poses
a regressive setup. He said the
monetization of the plan creates a sit-uation
in which the people who make
the most money get the most benefit,
and those who make the least money
get the least benefit.
Current permit fees are based on
faculty and staff annual salary as
budgeted for the fiscal year. Even fac-ulty
and staff members in the highest
salary tier only pay $96 annually.
Holland said another problem with
the plan is increased use of the New
Street garage. She said the plan will
include securing additional spaces
in the garage, which is currently
underutilized and unpopular because
studies showed it wasn’t a necessary
addition to the community.
“Construction of the New Street
garage was funded by taxpay-er-
backed general obligation bonds,”
she said. “The university should be
putting money into the construction
costs of that garage if it is going to be
such as a significant user of it.”
Douglas Mahony, a professor of
management and the chair of the
Faculty Senate executive committee,
Broadway Social follows trend of bar closures
Shana Lichaw/B&W Staff
Broadway Social, previously located in South Bethlehem, permanently closed its
doors in June after losing its liquor license. Broadway is one of several South Side
bars to have shut down within the last three years.
By SAAD MANSOOR
Associate News Editor
Broadway Social, a popular South
Side restaurant and nightclub on
Broadway St., closed its doors at the
end of June after its liquor license
was suspended.
Greg Salomoni, the former owner,
said it seemed like the city didn’t
want Broadway Social to be a part
of the community. Salomoni said he
thinks the police always gave him
trouble and never wanted his club to
succeed.
“(The police) started with noise
(complaints), then they kept on
coming with underage (drinking
charges),” Salomoni said. “Everyone
in college now has an ID from IDGod,
and these IDs get scanned. So, it’s
hard for us to keep underage people
out.”
Salomoni said he thinks the police
singled out Broadway Social because
it was the busiest place in the area.
It received four citations and 61 inci-dents
of disturbance and noise since
it opened in 2013.
Isaiah Birdsong, a Bethlehem res-ident
and barber at The Final Touch
Barber Shop, wasn’t surprised to
hear Broadway Social closed down.
“It wasn’t a reflection of anything
that I saw, but I heard a lot of neg-ative
things about it,” he said. “I
heard that they let underage people
get in and they had a lot of noise
complaints.”
Broadway Social’s closing falls in
line with a trend of bars shutting
down on the South Side. Both J.P.
MacGrady’s Pub and Leon’s Bar and
Restaurant shut down in 2015 and
2016, respectively.
Birdsong said he used to visit
MacGrady’s at least once a week to
socialize, but he now prefers to go
Molly’s Irish Grille & Sports Pub.
“MacGrady’s used to be my favor-ite
place to visit just because I liked
the atmosphere and diversity there,”
Birdsong said.
Maria Castro, ’18G, said most of
her friends stopped going to Leon’s
and MacGrady’s her sophomore year.
See BROADWAY Page 3
See PARKING Page 2
Faculty parking plan creates tiered system