By Christian Boyce
It is difficult to find logic in the sequence of events pertaining to preferential parking in the Ninth Street and Michigan Avenue area. See for yourself: City staff recommends parking restrictions for Ninth Street between Pico Boulevard and Michigan Avenue that leave nearly two-thirds of all parking spaces unrestricted. Residents predict the policy will make things worse. Council votes to implement restrictions as recommended by city staff.
The policy is implemented. The parking situation seems quite a bit worse. A follow-up study is performed by city staff to evaluate the effectiveness of the restrictions. The study shows that weekday, daytime parking occupancies have gone up significantly on Ninth Street since implementation of the restrictions, not just on the side with no restrictions (as could easily be predicted) but on the restricted side as well. Yet staff does not recommend extending weekday, daytime parking restrictions to the currently unrestricted east side of the street. Residents urge staff to reconsider, or at least to provide rationale for its decision. Staff does not reconsider, and after much prodding, says that spillover into areas several blocks from Ninth Street is its rationale even though the staff states in this same follow-up study that there is no correlation between parking occupancies in the two areas.
Staff has no data for weekend parking occupancies in the area yet suggests that weekend parking restrictions might be in order. Staff does have data for a Wednesday, and the data show that the street’s parking is more heavily impacted than it was before implementation of the staff’s recommendation, but staff ignores its own data and recommends leaving weekday, daytime restrictions as they are.
Staff puts out a survey to residents asking for input but noticeably omits mention of adding weekday, daytime parking restrictions. Residents are put on hold while staff adds up the numbers.
A year and a half has passed since the staff’s original recommendation. The recommendation has been shown, by staff’s own report, to have been detrimental to the residents of the area. Yet staff won’t budge from its original and faulty recommendation.
Preferential parking guidelines, as stated in our city’s municipal code, are all about protecting residents. But staff seems to be protecting someone else, and operating by a different set of rules.
What’s the logic in this? Why would staff not follow the municipal code? Why would staff not take care of the residents of Santa Monica, whom one presumes the staff is sworn to serve? Why would staff write a report that makes a strong case for doing one thing and then conclude the report by recommending something else?
Confused? Join the club. Maybe we’ll get some answers from the City Council during a public hearing on the matter. If the council doesn’t vote to hold a public hearing, we’ll have one more thing to wonder about. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 12, 2003. Read the original PDF.