Parking citations. These tickets are arguably the most annoying and money-draining things for students at Boulder High School, and I can’t help but think that the city has zero regards for the teenagers of the Boulder community.

As the year goes on, parking continues to be an increasingly difficult thing to find; more and more sophomores are getting their licenses, which has left the parking zones in the residential neighborhoods around Boulder High -which were already quite filled up – decimated.

Even if you can find a spot in these neighborhoods, you can’t park your car for more than two hours in the same zone. This may not seem all that inconvenient, however when examined more closely, it’s clear that almost every spot that’s even remotely close to the high school is in the “Goss Grove” zone, so really you can only park in the neighborhoods for two hours a day. For the rest of the day, you’re left with few options: you can either risk a ticket and park all day in the 2-hour zone or try to move your car to an all-day spot.

The all-day spots are the Holy Grail of parking, but there are very few that are actually available. On Marine Street – the closest street to Boulder High for parking – there is a lot of all-day parking, but much of those spots are taken by college students who live in the surrounding apartments, people who do morning sports, or those who get to school early (far earlier than any teenager should). And the all-day spots just off of Canyon, which are pretty far from the school, are often filled up and there are only about ten available spots in the morning.

There is one savior to this parking mess: parking permits issued by the city of Boulder that allow you to park your car in a 2-hour zone for the entire day. These permits, which cost roughly $400 per year, are extremely convenient and, although it may seem like a steep price to pay, one can easily rack up $400 worth of parking tickets over the year.

However, there is one major setback. These permits are few and far between and obtaining one is difficult, to say the least. There is a large waitlist and the permits are only available to be purchased on one day every three months. So to sum it up, while these permits are extremely beneficial, they aren’t easily obtained enough to solve the parking problem.

In the end, it really is the job of the city of Boulder and Boulder High School alike to find a suitable solution to the parking issues. We all know that the Senior lot is overrun and provides little relief to those who aren’t seniors, and even seniors themselves. And It is understandable where the school and city are coming from; at Boulder High – located in the center of Boulder – there simply isn’t much space to add parking and a lack of parking is just one aspect that comes along with the prime location of the school. However, whatever the problems or obstacles may be, it is clear that Boulder High needs to find a solution to the lack of parking – for the benefit of the students and community alike.