Next month the city will have the opportunity to increase the availability of parking in the heavily populated area of State Street and West Gorham. On December 8, the Mid-State Street Parking Ramp Committee will reconvene to discuss an issue that should have been settled years ago: where to build more parking in mid-State Street.

Apparently, this discussion has gone on for quite some time. According to Mark Olinger, director of the Department of Planning and Development for the city of Madison, the decision to add more parking to the mid-State Street area has actually been debated since the mid-1970s.

We wonder why no action has yet been taken. Students must still pay $50-$150 a month to park a car. Many students dealing with increasing tuition costs and decreasing job availability are turning to off-campus jobs to cover their educational expenses. This puts students in a bind: get a car to drive to your job, and you’ll end up using most of that extra money simply to cover the outrageous parking prices.

We suggest an incredibly novel idea for the committee and the city: pick a plan and start building. Students desperately need parking in the area around mid-State Street, and squabbling for months over mundane details (or decades, as the case may be) is no substitute for real action.

The most recent proposal was to construct a parking ramp to replace the Buckeye Lot, which is located near the intersection of State Street and West Gorham Street near Pizzeria Uno, but controversy surrounds this location. The Buckeye Lot is located directly across from Lisa Link Peace Park and the Mansion Hill National Historic District. The building of a parking structure would require the demolition of three houses in this district and could overshadow the park.

Tom Link is a member of the Lisa Link Peace Park Committee, which opposes the construction of the parking ramp. According to Link, “[The proposed building structure] is all part of the whining of business owners, as if parking will solve their problem … [Businesses] have massive parking lots they never use.”

If this is the case, we would like to see the massive unused parking lots. We would like to know where students could park at local businesses for reasonable prices. We would like to know why this issue is not being framed according to student interests but according to petty accusations about “evil” business interests in three houses that have more keg-parties than historical visits.

In the end, this issue is about what is best for students living and working in the area. We endorse realistic plans that solve the student-parking crisis. Such plans ought to include renting parking spaces for various lengths of time, like three days or a week. Such solutions, in addition to the traditional monthly parking options, would precisely satisfy the needs of many students living in and around State Street.