It’s that time of year again, and Transportation and Parking Services is feeling the spirit of giving. But this holiday season, they will be doing more than giving out the usual fines and citations.

On Monday, Parking Services began its second annual canned food drive to benefit underprivileged residents of the Santa Barbara area. The department has asked students and faculty to help make the drive a success by dropping off canned goods and other nonperishable food items at the parking services kiosks at the east and west ends of campus, or at the parking services main office across from Harder Stadium.

The drive will continue through Dec. 12, and all donated goods will be given to the Food Bank of Santa Barbara County, Parking Services Director Tom Roberts said. The food bank will then distribute the food among local organizations, such as Santa Barbara Transition House and Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, with much of the food eventually going to help disadvantaged families in the area.

Roberts said Parking Services has lots of trucks, people and facilities to use for a canned food drive and that it just seemed logical to put those resources to good use.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t be a major contributor to the food bank,” Roberts said.

Last year, Roberts said, parking services organized the drive at the last minute, so there was not much time to publicize it. However, he said he was still pleased with the response it generated.

“It was quite good, considering people had such short notice,” Roberts said.

This year, the organizers had more time to publicize the drive. Parking services put a notice in the faculty newsletter and sent an e-mail out to all the campus departments and all regular parking permit holders asking for help with the drive, Roberts said.

“We sent the e-mail out Monday, and the article in the newsletter runs [Wednesday], so I expect to see lots of donations start coming in soon,” Roberts said.

Roberts said that next year he hopes to enlist the help of another campus organization to help publicize and operate the food drive.

“If there was a fraternity or sorority that wanted to get the word out on this, we would welcome it,” he said.

Elena Ricci, financial specialist for Parking Services, said she hopes the drive will have a positive impact on area residents.

“The reason why we’re doing this is that we really want to help the community,” she said.

Ricci said organizing the drive has been an enjoyable experience, and cooperation with the food bank has been good.

“It’s been very easy, everyone has been very nice and very helpful,” Ricci said. “The food bank has been very supportive.”

Citation Coordinator for Parking Services Chris Palmer said the groundwork has been laid for the food drive, but that it is largely out of Parking Services’ control at this point.

“Now, we’re just hoping everyone will do their part to try to make this successful,” Palmer said.