More from the Chapel Hill News

My home town. Enjoy this story as reported by Scott Ferguson in a letter to the editor published in the Chapel Hill News. Parking venality at its best!

Where did hospital staff run off to?
If you were at UNC Hospitals on a Tar Heel home game day, you would see hospital staff leaving before their shift was over.

They are not going to the game. They are leaving their patients so they can move their cars from the parking lots that they pay the university for the privilege to park in.

Hospital employees must pay the university annual fees to park. On game days, they must vacate the lots so the university can sell the space the employees pay for to the sports fans coming for UNC football or basketball events.

So where do the employees move their cars to? To the public parking deck that they are not permitted to enter on any other day.

If it is a game day, and they must move their cars, then why did they not just park in the public lot at the start of their shift? Because the university does not allow them into the public parking deck until after 2:30 pm. on game days.

There is a tragedy waiting to happen. Will it be in the hospital, where loss of life could happen because nurses and doctors are out playing musical chairs with their cars? Could it be on the roads around the hospital when a hospital employee is injured or killed because he has to run the gauntlet of construction areas and the heavy truck and equipment traffic that is around the hospital now?

UNC and the hospital need to rethink this policy. -- Scott Ferguson, Pittsboro

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