Since preferential parking was created more than 25 years ago, City Hall politicians and staff have created a monster. Now, they’re scrambling to find a way to tame it.
City Hall’s transportation planning manager Lucy Dyke told the City Council last week that there were more than 40,000 parking permit holders in Santa Monica. About two-thirds of city streets have restrictions.
The City Council dutifully voted to move an ordinance forward allowing employees of businesses around 10th Street and Pico Boulevard to obtain a total of 20 permits to park in adjacent residential permit parking zones (PPZs) for one year. If this “test” is successful — although no criteria for measuring success was presented — employee parking in residential PPZs will proliferate.
Municipal code, section 3.08.040, says PPZs are appropriate only to relieve or eliminate nonresidential or commercial parking “that interferes with the use of the majority of available public street or alley parking by adjacent residents... at regular and significant daily or weekly intervals.” The folks in City Hall’s transportation management department asked to sell permits to every nonresident the law was originally intended to keep off residential streets, freeze new zones and expand existing PPZs to neighbors on non-permit blocks.
I agree with City Councilman Kevin McKeown that neighborhood integrity and quality of life must be preserved, and I share his concern about so many empty parking spots on streets where residents insist they needed restrictions. Nowhere is more parking space wasted than in the vast “permit only” areas of Sunset Park where college students and staff are definitely persona non grata, even though a handful of store and small business employees may be OK.
Denying permits to college or school district employees and students, employees of large businesses or otherwise cherry picking which “nonresidents” can or cannot park is discriminatory and could result in litigation and maybe threaten all permit parking.
The City Council also affirmed that it would not approve any new parking zones north of the Montana Avenue commercial strip, thereby denying those residents the same opportunity for parking relief available to every other neighborhood.
Lastly, the transportation management department also proposed to extend numerous existing PPZs citywide 200 feet onto adjacent adjoining streets. Because there’s virtually no enforcement, most multi-family neighborhood PPZs are usually filled up for the night by 6 p.m. even though most have a “two-hour limit until 9 p.m.” Adding more permit holders to these PPZs would add even more vehicles to already crowded blocks — some with only two-dozen spots. Any benefits of permit parking would be lost.
I informed transportation management staff that one 40-unit apartment building within its proposed 200 foot “fuzzy zone” alone could double the number of permit holders in our block. Ruth Harper replied, “It is not our intention to sell permits for an existing zone to any buildings with 40 units.”
Wait a minute. I don’t remember the size of a resident’s building or any other specific criteria in the resolution that staff asked the City Council to approve. This opens the door to arbitrary, inconsistent and possibly illegal decisions as to who would or wouldn’t get permits. Nevertheless, the City Council voted to continue this item that, if approved, would give staff a big chunk of responsibility, courtesy of some of the same coun-cilmembers who constantly whine that staff already has too much power.
McKeown is the only person on the dais who understands the parking issue. He was the only vote against giving staff authority to expand existing PPZs and restricting new permit parking north of Montana. He consistently votes for residents when parking variances would allow entities, including a church, to defer required on-site parking onto city streets.
It’s interesting to note that the other councilmembers voting Tuesday night — Herb Katz, Richard Bloom, Bob Holbrook and Bobby Shriver — all live in expensive, single-family neighborhoods with “permit only” parking restrictions. And speaking of Shriver, he seemed to be totally unprepared on this issue. Based on his questions, it appeared as if he hadn’t read the staff report, his e-mails or even my column on the subject last week.
Despite the City Council’s vote to continue the item to a later date, I received an e-mail Wednesday from Dyke, citing some legal concerns. It said, “The 200-foot rule is now out so that we have some more time to try to draft something more narrow, with less discretion.”
I can’t wait. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 6, 2006. Read the original PDF.