New Mexico State University is preparing to begin discussions on parking regulation updates for the campus that have not been fully revised since 2013. 

According to Director of Auxiliary Business Support Kim Huddleston, talks to begin pushing for updates in regulations took place in 2019 as she received various recommendations on what could be done better from people in her department and the NMSU police department. 

“We are really trying to clean some stuff up in the regulations,” Huddleston said. “The regulations have been around for quite a while, and they’re a little outdated so we’re just trying to update them.” 

 NMSU Parking and Traffic Regulations reported the last update was performed Oct. 10, 2013; the last revision being from the 2017 Recompilation in concern to other fees in connection to the parking department.  

NMSU junior Carrin Melloy was surprised to hear how long the regulations have been out of date while NMSU continued to grow over the years. 

“I think it’s stupid that there was hasn’t been a full-on update of the regulations for like seven years,” Meloy said. “With how much NMSU has grown population-wise, with the new dorm and everything, you would think it would be kind of important to try and fix that to fit the students’ needs.” 

Huddleston has expressed that at the moment they are unsure of what will be changed and that the process to modernize the parking regulations is complicated and could take up to a year to be put in place.  

“We are working on some updates, and it’s a very long process,” Huddleston said. “We do not get a say on what gets updated. It has to go all the way up to the Board of Reagents and it’s got to go through a lot of stages before it gets there, so it will take about a year to go through the process.”  

In accordance with the Procedures to Revise NMSU Policies and Rules, any idea for a change in policy must first be supported by a “Proposal Sponsor” to be ushered through the procedural steps. Afterward, a Policy Administrator – someone who is involved in the implementation of this change – would be chosen and help determine where the policy would best be applied in the university.  

Should the policy not have a specific scope of where to be implemented the University General Counsel will assist in the initial development and approval process. The proposed policy is then ushered back and in the review and approval process. At this stage, all comments from the review and a Review Track Form will make up the Proposal Packet. 

The Packet will then be sent to the Assignment Advisory Group where, in this case, the proposal would be placed on the Administrative Track Proposal, where it will go through another review and comment period. Eventually, the proposal will make it to the Chancellor, and should the Chancellor approve the packet, it will be sent to the Board of Regents.  

It is due to this excessive process, Huddleston said, that the regulations do not get updated all that much aside from a few revisions here and there.  

When the probability of student recommended more parking came up as an idea for a parking update, Huddleston explained that after an assessment done in 2018, it was revealed that NMSU contained 122 parking lots with 16,00 parking spots.  

According to page four of the assessment, during the day parking lots on the east and south side of the university, near the Pan American Center, are utilized less than 25%. Parking lots in the north, west, and the core of the campus are usually utilized more than 90% of the time.    This is no doubt due to NMSU being compact with the buildings being in the center of the campus.