ESU welcomes new parking director Frank Gay to campus.  

Frank Gay, manager of parking, security and transportation, started his job on campus in June.  

Gay is from Florida and got his start in security for commercial properties. After that, he attended the police academy and served the public for 25 years, a majority of that spent being a training officer.  

He spent years in security and investigation, doing anti-terrosim investigations for nearly 12 years. He served as a member of the SWAT/HNT (Special Weapons and Tactics Team/ Hostage Negotiations Team) for 15 years, 10 of those being team leader. He was also the Head of Security for Buzz Aldrin Ventures LLC.  

Gay boasts a number of other notable skills, most interesting is being a certified Krav Maga instructor and hostage negotiations instructor.  

He now lives in Cresco, P.a. and has retired from law enforcement.  

Gay also has innovative ideas to improve parking on campus, which has been a hot button issue this year. On Oct. 25, Gay had a meeting with the zoning company to complete their parking assessment, which is an assessment taken every three years.  

“This assessment is going to find if we do have enough parking based on the current need and projected growth”, says Gay.  “If we have enough parking, then how do we make it better parking?”  

According to Gay, the parking lots on the east part of the campus are severely underutilized.  

“I do get complaints of people saying, ‘I paid $100 for parking and I can’t find spaces’, and I hear those, I get the phone calls, emails, and I do try to respond to everyone, but I include solutions to the problems. We have parking available at the east end of campus, by the library and fine arts.” 

“My team and I drive past those lots all hours of the day to confirm that’s true, because I don’t want to be giving out false information, and I haven’t ever driven through those parking lots and found them full.”  

Gay says that, even though it’s not convenient parking, it is still parking, and the university offers services such as shuttle rides and courtesy police rides in an attempt to alleviate issues and help students feel safe when getting around campus.  

So, why does it seem like there are issues with parking this year?  

There are a few reasons, the first being that student enrollment is on an upwards trend.  

“As we grow, programs grow, needs grow, everybody needs more spaces”, says Gay.  

Another reason is all the construction on campus- all those trucks and machinery need room, and they need room close to the construction site.  

Another possible reason, though it has not been technically confirmed, is allowing more freshmen to have cars on campus.  

“I think about two years ago, the policy was changed to bring freshman cars on campus. That being said, coming out of covid time, there was low attendance and very few people were on campus, and as part of that return, to now include freshmen in that number, where we never had that number before, obviously it puts a strain on the system. But we don’t know what that strain is going to be {until we complete the parking assessment}.”  

There have been moves to help students, the foremost being relaxing on parking fines. According to Gay, for the first few weeks, parking tickets were more flexible to help students register for parking spaces and become acquainted with the campus.  

However, a big issue for parking this year has been students parking in “unsafe areas” or in handicapped spaces and fire lanes. “Unsafe areas” include parking on the grass or at the ends of rows in the lots. This can block traffic and create issues for other vehicles to get through.  

Another has been students racking up unpaid tickets- which means they run the risk of getting booted.  

Gay is also planning to reinstate the parking committee, which will be monthly virtual meetings made up of staff and students.  

“I acknowledge that you as the students are our customers. We provide customer service. So as the customer, we want you to be happy with the service we provide, we just have to figure out how to do it with the resources we have,” says Gay.