As of September, NIU sold about 1,968 fewer parking permits than last year, making it the first noticeable decrease in permit sales in university history.

Lynn Fraser, campus parking manager, said at a Nov. 3 NIU Parking Committee meeting that a study conducted by the university found the majority of the sales decrease is in orange coded/resident student permits. She said that as of September, about 801 fewer orange permits were sold than last year.

The university study found the sales of brown-coded/walk or bus zone student permits have decreased slightly less than the orange permits, with a drop of about 647 permits, Fraser said. About 163 fewer blue-coded/faculty and staff permits have been sold than last year’s total, she said.

Bob Bornhuetter, parking committee chairman, said he believes the decrease in sales is mainly a result of the university cutting enrollment by 1,000 students for the 1988-89 academic year. He said that because there are fewer students on campus, fewer permits were purchased.

“It’s also getting more and more expensive to own a car,” so some students living in dormitories do not believe it is worth the expenses to keep a vehicle on campus, Bornhuetter said.

He said some people also might not have purchased permits because of the price increase from last semester. Part-time students or students who commute to the NIU engineering school in Sycamore might not want to pay $30 for a permit, but “we can’t offer discount stickers to these students because someone still has to pay for the maintenance of (the Sycamore lots).”

Fraser said she believes fewer brown-coded permits have been sold this year because there are few spaces designated for the color.

Henry Winsor, a student parking committee member, suggested that the committee open a parking lot to brown permits to encourage more sales.

Bornhuetter said the committee will study lot usage to determine whether some lots should be recoded. He said that if the committee does not believe certain lots are being fully utilized, lot codings will be modified.

Another cause for fewer sales could be from university employees being laid off from their jobs, Bornhuetter said. “Two or three cars here … six cars there, and the numbers begin to add up,” he said.

Although this is the first significant decrease in permit sales NIU has experienced, Bornhuetter said he is not concerned. He said the decline in sales actually will benefit students, faculty and visitors because there will be more spaces left in which to park.