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By Yvonne Najera

New parking permit meters have been installed on campus that now accept credit and debit cards.

According to Parking Technician Paul Broadnax, the main campus has 37 meters operating, and the Community Education Center campus on Foothill Boulevard has four machines.

Police Chief Stanton Perez, director of police and safety services, said the new machines have the capability for real time notification of any system failure or malfunction. They alert Broadnax on a system integrated iPad for immediate maintenance to that machine, he said.

“[The new machines] provide us with tremendous capabilities beyond what we had up until this point, which is coins or the dollar [bill],” Perez said.

This updated technology can greatly reduce the number of complaints about the parking machines, which mostly consisted of their inability to take cards, he said.

“Long term, we are looking to make further improvements with all of our parking systems around campus,” Perez added. “We looked at different technology, but this is the one that immediately came about. There are other functions we are looking at for the future, one is being able to take more than the one dollar or coin.”

Perez said complaints from students and visitors in the past have been that a machine is not functioning or they do not have the proper change or dollar amount. Then they run the risk of receiving a citation and have to spend the time to contest it.

The new system was put into place a couple of weeks ago to test out during the summer semester, Perez said, and now that the machines have passed the test, they are ready for the influx of students for the fall semester.

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