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# Telling City Council where to park it
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/telling-city-council-where-to-park-it/
- Published: 2004-11-20T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:38:32.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Business, Santa Monica, #archive-import

This past week, Q-line asked: In order to free up parking on major thoroughfares for customers, “should residents give up some of their parking spaces for businesses?”

> “I am concerned about the City Council addressing the Pico neighborhood problems as far as shootings and theft and all the other crime that happens here. This is a place that allows people in the middle income group to be able to live in Santa Monica and it’s important for our concerns to be addressed and not just those of the wealthy north of Wilshire.” — TIMES BY LLOYD GARVER ✆

Here are your responses: ✆ “In my opinion, preferred residential parking is highly questionable. The streets and roadways are paid for with tax dollars of all people. Considering this fact, all people should be allowed to use them on a first-come basis. I also find parking meters to be a stretch due to the motorists being charged a fee to park in a space paid for with their tax dollars. Still, the reason I agree to allowing workers to have parking permits is that the majority of workers who work in Santa Monica have to drive long distances to get to Santa Monica and need an automobile for that purpose due to the poor public transportation being available. When those employees arrive in Santa Monica, they need a place to park their cars. It’s as simple as that.” ✆ “I cannot understand the idea of this City Council, which is the worst we’ve ever had, giving up parking spaces for businesses. What are we talking about? Why don’t these businesses build their own parking (garages) underneath their buildings? There’s not enough parking for residents to begin with. I think we gotta get rid of the City Council. Everyone except for Shriver. This is too much. It’s just going on and on and on with all this. We got rid of Feinstein, which was great. Now we gotta get rid of the other ones giving up parking for businesses...” ✆ “As a resident of Santa Monica, and already having difficulty parking near my address four blocks north of Wilshire Boulevard, I cannot understand why I should be asked to subsidize the business owner — in many cases, large, national corporations. I suggest they bear the cost of parking of their employees. Maybe the city of Santa Monica in all its wisdom wants to turn the city into one large shopping center. Does the City Council know the meaning of the word ‘density,’ or is there only interest to obtain tax revenue that businesses throw off?” ✆ “The important thing to remember is that street parking is public parking. That means it belongs to the public. It’s first-come, first-serve — whether you’re a resident, a business customer or a business employee. Now, if you don’t think there’s enough parking, build a frickin’ (sic) parking lot. Or buy a parking lot. Or rent a space that has parking. This preferential parking, for example, is usurping ownership over public property, by individuals of public parking spaces that don’t belong to them. They belong to whoever gets there first, period.” ✆ “Yes, I think it’s a wonderful idea to let some of the businesses park in our lovely city of ‘Samolicious.’” ✆ “Landlords should be forced to provide a certain number of spaces for each unit, and beyond that, if people have too many cars, they should charge triple (the fee). If someone has three extra cars, they should be forced to pay three times the regular price for each parking permit. If they can afford to have a lot of cars, they can afford to pay the parking fees.” ✆ “What? No way! If anything, the city needs to cut back on the business build-up and, in turn, use the space to provide more parking for visitors, customers, and also residents.” ✆ “Parking, like so many other things, is a terrible mess in this poor city, which is slowly going down the drain. Now we are pitting residents against struggling businesses and poor employees trying to make a living. All because inept mayors and councilmen have never looked and planned adequately for the future, in issues that really count — traffic and parking being two prime ones. Instead of building a library — way over cost, and not really needed in the first place, which will be a palatial bum hangout anyway — parking structures above and below ground should have been provided. And allowing all these buildings and over-building in general has and will continue to be chaotic and catastrophic. I don’t see any hope on the horizon, especially with this status quo mayor and City Council.” ✆ “Residents should not give up their parking for businesses. That’s part of the problem in the first place, that the residents couldn’t park in front of their own homes.” ✆ “I believe that if there’s a business owner, a small business for example, on Wilshire Boulevard, I think that he should have an opportunity to get a placard for his rearview mirror which will allow him to park in the residential neighborhoods. But I don’t believe that it’s right for customers to be able to do this, or other employees. I think that if all employees of a business are allowed to do this, and allowed to have placards to park in residential neighborhoods, it will really clog the streets for the neighborhoods whose residents don’t have enough parking as it is. One of the problems is that with apartment buildings, there are limited spaces available for our street parking, and as a consequence, those who live in the apartments who don’t have one of the spaces are forced to park on the street. This is another dilemma and an issue that needs some attention as well.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 20, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/112004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)