Campus Safety would like to set the record straight for disgruntled students who think there’s some sort of ulterior motive for issuing parking citations.

“There’s no quotas whatsoever for tickets,” said Justin Shelby, Campus Safety’s administrative operations manager. “We definitely want to avoid that because, really, our goal isn’t to cite students — our goal is to make sure the parking regulations are being observed.”

Kurt Yazdizadeh, a junior business major issued a parking ticket Friday, had heard otherwise.

“I’ve heard from word of mouth students saying Campus Safety intentionally leaves a gap in their budget to be made up by students’ tickets,” he said.

Shelby declined to discuss details about Campus Safety’s budget, but he did downplay the importance of income from citations. The money collected from citations goes to the financial management office, Shelby said.

“The amount of money we make from citations is pretty insignificant,” he said. “There’s no expectation that we write a particular number of citations … If we’re doing our job and students are parking and driving perfectly, then there’s no need for us to write citations.”

Shelby said the statistics of citations from past semesters were not readily available because “the database system we’re using is ancient,” and he had “no idea” as far as estimating citation totals.

Nevertheless, a vehicle with no permit is the most common reason for a citation, Shelby said, adding that citations are most prevalent at the beginning of semesters, and especially in the spring.

He said several factors might cause the spring’s spike in citations, including busyness, which may in turn lead to forgetfulness. Students who got a permit in fall might not think twice about it in spring, he said.

The bulk of these tickets are issued for vehicles with no parking permits after a two-week grace period ends. Even after the start of the semester, he said, there are still usually about 400 students who haven’t picked up the parking permits they purchased.

Biola has sold about 2,400 parking permits this semester.

Another common citation is illegal parking, which is cited when a student parks in a staff parking space, for instance. Yazdizadeh’s citation was for illegally parking in a staff spot near Fluor Fountain.

“It’s Friday, there isn’t as many staff, and there’s tons of open spots,” he said. “It’s nothing I can fight because I was parked in the wrong spot.”

The peak time for parking on campus is between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., said Ken Bascom, Biola’s senior director of facilities planning.

Though faculty and staff spaces are all full during this hour, “there are probably in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 spaces available during peak time,” he said, noting that some of those spaces are reserved for drivers with disabilities. Biola has almost 3,000 parking spaces total on campus.

“If you come at the peak hour, you’re going to save yourself a lot of frustration if you go to the structure,” Bascom said.

A walk to most classes from the parking structure, Lot R, takes three or four minutes, which could be faster than waiting for an open spot in lots A or B, he said.

More students than ever before are parking in streets off campus with an estimate of 930 cars.

“We do have kind of a growing problem,” Bascom added.

The main problem is that residents living on two streets near campus have begun petitioning the city to zone their streets as permit-only parking, he said. Homeowners are weary of blocked driveways, blocked trashcans and litter on their properties or in the streets.

“More and more, neighbors just get frustrated with students parking in front of their houses,” he said. “We encourage students to be good witnesses.”

Students who commute to campus via bicycle are not immune from Campus Safety citations. In addition to illegally chaining a bike, tickets can be issued for riding a bicycle on sidewalks or anywhere else vehicles are not allowed.

“I feel like because there are so many tickets it’s really easy to antagonize [Campus Safety], but they’re people, too,” said Yazdizadeh, who has previously received two parking tickets and had a third overturned by appeal.

“I was talking to a Campus Safety guy, and he’s like, ‘Hey, don’t feel afraid to say ‘Hi’ if I’m walking by.’”