By Bia Machain and Kiara Craig, May 5, 2026
Cal Poly Pomona’s Parking and Transportation Services office has a backlog of 4,180 parking violation ticket appeals awaiting processing since mid-July 2023, according to the most recent CPP dataset on parking violations.
Almost every other pending appeal was filed in 2023 and 2024, according to the same data set that contains CPP parking violation information for a period between July 1, 2021, and Feb. 26, 2026. The same document shows that nearly 30% of closed appeal cases took over one year to be resolved, and 10 appeals of those appeals took over three years to get resolved.
Over 80% of all pending appeals are the cases when a vehicle was parked without a valid parking permit, the same dataset on parking violations revealed.
CPP Executive Director of Parking, Transportation and Administrative Services Mike Yu told The Poly Post that out of eight people in the department, only one person handles the appeals.
“That’s to ensure that all citations are being looked at objectively, in the same way, by the same person,” Yu said.
Despite 649 still pending appeals filed in 2023, Yu said citation appeals are addressed on a first come, first serve basis.
Parking and Transportation Services received just over 10,100 parking citation appeals in the period between July 1, 2021 and Feb. 26, 2026, according to the data set. Just over 22% of the citations appeals the department dismissed, whereas slightly more than 36% of the appeals have been upheld, according to the data set.
A single employee who handles the appeals is not a single factor causing the backlog, according to Yu. He listed seasonal spikes in citations and citation appeals at the start of fall and spring semesters, and the backlog from the COVID-19 period as additional factors. He also said the three-level appeal escalation system attributes to the backlog, since those can take a long time.
Students can appeal citations on three levels. A first level of appeal is done through the campus, and if rejected, can be escalated to a second level citation done through a third party, separate from CPP. The third and final level of appeal is a court review.
According to the CPP’s Parking and Transportation Services website, a student who has unpaid parking citations worth at least $300 can be put on a registration hold. Yu said If a student experiences this conflict, the student’s best course of action is to email or call Parking and Transportation Services. Depending on the circumstances, Parking and Transportation Services office is more inclined to dismiss a citation if it was caused by something that the department is lacking, Yu explained.
“We don’t want to be the reason students can’t graduate,” Yu said. “So, we’ll work together, and again it’s very situation specific.
However, some appeals get resolved after students’ graduation. One Reddit post from a CPP alumnus on r/CalPoly Pomona displayed a picture of a statement of appeal that was sent two and a half years after the initial appeal date, and two years after his graduation.
Large gaps between appeal and decision leave students in the dark about what steps to take next. Nicollette Davis, a theater arts acting student, is one of those students. Davis received two No Valid Parking Permit citations while parked in a disabled parking spot, despite having the appropriate placard and paperwork, Feb. 17 and 20, 2026. Davis immediately submitted appeals for both citations but hasn’t received the resolution of those appeals yet.
Davis decided to take things into her own hands and inquire how long an appeal should take to process, and the answer she got was–between two months and two years.
Despite the wide timeframe given to Davis, in the past five years 14.5% of appeals have taken over two years to close, according to CPP appeal count information. Davis said she plans to graduate in 2027, and this long appeal wait time that may extend her time at CPP has led to worry and frustration, she says.
In some cases, students feel unnecessary citations contribute to the long appeal process. Jasmine Bennett, architecture student, received a citation for not having a resident sticker in University Village parking the same week Bennett had bought a parking pass, Feb. 26, 2026.
“I appealed later that day, and was able to show proof of the sticker, yet for some reason, I’m still having issues with the appeal,” Bennett said. “It’s crazy to have to pay $250 for a parking pass then get charged another $80 over a free sticker.”
Parking without permit
CPP has less than 50% parking compliance rate, according to Yu.
Around 75% of CPP undergraduate students identify as commuters, according to CPP’s 2025-2026 Common Data Set. Those who drive to campus pay $231 for parking passes per semester, or $8 daily. However, parking without a valid parking permit results in an $80 fine, a recent jump from $48.
The Parking and Transportation Services department makes between $7 and $9 million from the parking passes annually, according to Yu. In addition to that, according to the CPP data set on parking violations, CPP made $4.2 million from parking violations in the period between July 1, 2021, and Feb. 26, 2026.
Yu said there is an increase in citations for parking without a valid permit, as it is a strategy to increase the parking compliance rate.
“It was just to address the non-compliance,” Yu said. “Increasing it changes the number of citations you can get before it makes sense to buy a parking permit. So, it was to encourage students to really think about ‘yeah maybe I should just get a permit.’”
Of the just over 50,000 citations given over the course of a little over five years, over 82% were issued in cases when a valid parking permit was not displayed on a vehicle, according to the CPP data on parking violations.
Certain parking lots seem to be particularly high generators for fines. According to CPP’s citation violations data, Parking Lot G, a restricted parking southeast of Bronco Bookstore, had generated over $334,000 in fines, while Parking Lot Q, east of Residence Suites that requires a resident parking permit both to park and charge electric vehicles, brough about $389,000 in fines, between July 2021 and February 2026. For comparison, both lots generated more than half of the fines generated for all six floors of Parking Structure 1, mostly reserved for students, which totaled over $580,000 during the same period.
According to Yu, there are no set routes that parking officers follow for ticketing. However, there are hot spots that are patrolled based on feedback from faculty and students who report areas of non-compliance, Yu said.
The amount of active parking enforcement officers depends on the time of day, former community service officer and business student Caleb Kaiser said. According to Kaiser, there are typically three active parking enforcement officers during weekdays. Kaiser, who worked for the Parking and Transportation Services office between 2022 and 2024, also said he never had an impression that there is a quota system for issuing parking violation citations.
While parking non-compliance is a prevalent issue on campus, students often report struggling to pay fines. Andrew Escobedo, a fifth-year computer information systems student, said high parking permit fees in addition to expensive housing create the mounting debt for students.
To pay or appeal a parking citation, students can do so through the parking portal linked on the Parking and Transportation website.
“The best thing students can do is to email us at parking@cpp.edu and then we will look at each case individually, because we don’t just blanket entry everybody, we treat each case the same,” Yu said.
Feature graphed source from Cal Poly Pomona data
Xiomara Serrato contributed to the story.
