The parking garage frequently used by students on campus has an estimated 400 parking spaces and is cleaned twice a day.
“I have to take someone away from cutting and edging the grass or some other entity of maintenance to clean up the garage,” said Kendall Jones, physical plant director.
Non-educational and general facilities hire physical plant employees to clean specific facilities.
Plant Operations & Maintenance is paid by parking services to have the garage cleaned.
Because they are understaffed, the garage is not maintained on a regular basis, Jones said.
“I think we are doing extremely well. I would rate it good. Considering the lack of resources; we are handling what we have,” Jones said.
Plant Operations & Maintenance is responsible for all educational and general facilities.
They include the classrooms, administration buildings and all fields, including the stadium and intramural field, the band practice field known as the patch and the baseball, softball and football practice field, which is near the recreation center.
Physical plant employees are also responsible for landscaping and monitoring the electrical and water supply to the campus. Jones said if parking services would like to designate a physical plant employee just to keep the parking garage clean, they can do so, but they have not.
“I did not know about the garage not being cleaned. I’m going to bring it up in the next executive meeting,” said James Lockley, assistant police chief.
Lockley said they needed to designate someone to clean it.
“Plant Operations & Maintenance is being paid by parking services to clean the garage, but if it’s not being done properly, we will handle that situation,” Lockley said.
Plant Operations & Maintenance does have an employee to take the trash and clean the parking spaces in the morning and at night.
“I have class at 8 in the morning and it’s clean, but the stairs do smell like piss,” said Travisa Skinner, 19 from Fort Lauderdale.