I think this is a solid plan because it uses real data and includes input from everyone involved, offering practical solutions like permits. However, it could backfire. A paid system might upset students and residents, and the $20 fee might not generate enough money to actually fix the parking shortage.

I think this is a solid plan because it uses real data and includes input from everyone involved, offering practical solutions like permits. However, it could backfire. A paid system might upset students and residents, and the $20 fee might not generate enough money to actually fix the parking shortage.

I find it wouldn't be fair because you require us to go to this school and then charge us a fairly expensive amount of money just for us to be able to park at this school and I understand the argument of taking the bus and we don't have to drive but many of us have something we do after school like Clubs, Sports, Work, ect and charging us feels like a big cash grab we already struggle to find parking you shouldn't charge us on top of it plus you have to factor in the people who live somewhere a bus doesn't go and also the people who cant afford to pay for it

Could you get anymore greedy? Seriously this is ridiculous and disgusting. High school students and teachers literally cant afford this stuff. Stop with the greed before we break out the pitchforks and torches!

Making people buy a permit is a terrible idea and would just make it harder for students and families who can't afford to pay for the permit, a much better idea would be a parking lot for the school nearby.

I believe charging a fee for parking around Hellgate High School may not be beneficial. While it might bring in extra local revenue, keeping parking free is important, as paid parking could lead to costs that some students can't afford. Instead of fees, we could consider other funding options. As a student, I see the importance of avoiding budget cuts in our programs, particularly the arts, since they affect all students and can weaken our overall support.

Hellgate High needs a parking structure. What they currently have for parking options is ridiculous. Parallel parking along busy roads is completely unsafe for high school students. The whole situation at Hellgate is awful with a school that desperately needs updates and repairs and no places to park for anyone. The City of Missoula, Missoula County Public Schools, and voters need to look at the big picture here and do better for our kids with this school. Build a parking structure for the kids!

As seen by the already bustling downtown Missoula, paid-parking does little to nothing in terms of reducing a city's clog of traffic, so I don't see why this should be impacting residential areas and people who have to park in a specific space every day 5 days a week, staff and children included. Particularly impactful to a salary of a teacher or student who could have a job, but if they don't need one they might not have one to pay for parking and could risk being late for class due to the need to park further away.

I think that this would be unfair to students because not all kids have jobs or could be able to pay for a permit. If kids had to take the bus parents would still have to pick them up if they did sports because hellgate doesn't run late busses

I am a student at Hellgate, and I feel like making people that are attending Hellgate pay for parking would be unfair because it is not students or staffs fault that we aren't provided a parking lot, so we have to park in the neighborhoods. I suggest that the school or community can provide parking pass that can hang in your car as a student or staff, even though this wont work for our many visitors through school and sports.

As a former student of hellgate I know the pain of parking, as a low income student I got ticket after ticket and boot after boot. Putting in paid parking would make this a more common occurrence and provide a barrier to students to be able to take their time and really get involved at hellgate. Not to mention if students legally have to attend school isn’t charging for parking and lunches the antithesis of the encouragement they should be receiving?

I feel like making high schoolers pay for parking is unrealistic considering many students don’t have a job and may not be able to fit a job into their schedule due to after school activities and extracurriculars. No student with a job could afford to pay $85 a week just to park their car. The whole point of a student having a car is so they can get to school to better their education, not to be an inconvenience. As a high schooler myself, it’s hard enough to find a spot no matter how early you get to school.

As a student who has their license and wake up considerably early, there’s not enough parking spaces for students and by eliminating our parking even more and making us pay on public streets is not fair to the students. You’re only giving us a couple blocks of public streets and making us pay to park on streets even though Hellgate has been parking on the streets for decades and no one has ever complained until recently. I do not see this as a beneficial thing I see this as a punishment and I do not think that this is fair. And as a student who’s not able to get a job and is busy with sports and other extracurricular activities it’s already gonna be hard enough for me to pay for parking and for kids that already struggle with money and are already providing for their families. It’s not fair to them to pay for parking and expect them to keep up with the standards that you were creating.

I am a Hellgate student and am speaking against pay to park. I think that it is completely unreasonable to make students pay for parking to access our education. Gas is already expensive, and to add to the cost to go to school is ridiculous. I do agree that the parking situation in the area is a problem, but students should not be punished for going to school.

charging kids for parking at a public school is a denial of a basic right to a free education. I absolutely am against the proposition to charge kids to park.

there is no parking the way it is and the city wants to make less parking for staff, kids and volunteers. I run the coffee shop and deliver supplies this a big physical job and to not find parking already makes it hard. Our principal went to advocate for the Hellgate community and was shut down multiple times. nobody is listening.

Penalizing the only high school without a designated parking lot? Yikes. Why is this the solution rather than requiring parking solutions to be part of every new building project around town? These kids and teachers come from all over Missoula and outside of Missoula. They spend money in the surrounding businesses. They make that neighborhood amazing and vibrant. There has to be a better solution.

I am a former Hellgate knight, parent to a current Knight, University District resident, and downtown business manager. I volunteer every week at Hellgate to help raise money for the school, so I will also be impacted by this.

We live a distance from Hellgate that makes many students feel like they should drive, but it is actually easier NOT to drive. I encourage my Knight to find alternatives to keep the parking free for students who need to drive (instead of just not wanting to walk). Maybe there is a way to issue permits for students outside a certain radius and the rest of the kids need to pay up or WALK!

Thank you so much for your time.

I don't care for this policy, really at all. Although, yes, one could argue that the current situation could lead to potential problems in regards to parking spaces for individual residents nearby- for the most part, this seems to be a rather small problem for the grand majority of people. First off, that metric about 2,000 vehicles trying to access 500 or so parking spaces is questionable at best: the entirety of the freshmen populace is effectively unable to use this unless they failed the previous year because they literally don't have access, much of the sophmore populace is hardly much better in terms of accessibility as most of them are still either too young or are actively getting their license, and all the grades are far from having a 100% car-usage rate. And as for the staff and living units: it's not like these groups are all using the same spots at the same times, I'm really not worried about this. All that I DO know, is that plenty of students drive because they have J O B S afterschool, to which this policy would just punish for being productive members of society.

You need to figure out something with parking obviously, but paid parking isn’t it. Charging kids to go to school is crazy

I am a former Hellgate student and current private music teacher who lives in the area and works with many students from the school. Fixing the parking problem does not begin with charging students and teachers money to park/get a permit. It feels like a greedy solution to a problem that's alway existed. Especially considering they're already close to residential parking which requires a permit and they are already often ticketed for where they've parked. A better solution is to create more FREE parking and less limited options due to restricting signage. Perhaps Hellgate finally deserves adequate parking! Let's not punish children for the school/city's lack of options.