Historically, as homeowners/renters we control the land that we pay for. Wherever you live, you choose a property that has a garage to park your car or a driveway for your own cars or for visitors. The street is for anyone to park on, short term. The 72-hour limit prohibits storing vehicles on the street vs. parking. If you need the space in front of your residence for some reason, you get a permit and put cones up for the day. However, the resident doesn’t have any greater legal right to park in front of where they live than anyone else. Some take a more proprietary view of the space in front of their homes than others, but it is not an entitlement.
The use of residential parking permits would alter this. It says that unless you live there, you can’t park there. It effectively privatizes public space. The community doesn’t take it back, the people who have proximity ownership do. This is not a benefit to a community; it is a benefit to the people who live on a street. A program like this would have a profound impact on the commercial districts. For the homeowner, it adds a layer of bureaucracy ” each time you want to have friends or service people at your house longer than two hours (or whatever time frame established in the zone), a permit would be required and a fee collected.
In commercial areas there is also a desire to adjust the way the public has a right to use the public streets. A popular notion that is being discussed at the parking meetings is that the only people that are entitled to park on the street are those that are there to spend money in shops or restaurants. If you are there to do anything else, you are trying to injure the commercial community.
These are public streets.
A business property owner also makes a decision to purchase or do business on a particular parcel. It either has parking on it or doesn’t. It might require the purchase of places to park for customers or employees at another location. It is part of the decision and cost of doing business.
Much of the problem as it exists today may have to do with the lack of discipline on the part of Development Services at the City of San Diego regarding conformance to the parking requirements for development. We have had many years with many projects that have caused us to arrive at the place we are at today with parking! There are reductions with parking overlay zones and all sorts of exceptions. Another impact would be where parking is required, rather than serving the building it is intended for, the parking is leased off. This looks like finding a way around being the self-sufficient project that the regulation intends.
My belief is that we are best served as a community by being as self-sufficient for our own parking as possible. We must all ” residents and businesses alike ” make choices about where we are going to be located based on what we need, and what we can provide for ourselves. Transfering this responsibility to public policy decisions doesn’t make it better ” it makes it complicated, resulting in all sorts of ways it can go wrong or get derailed by powerful interests. This situation isn’t unique.
The question is whether the community is served by playing along in this quest to get more money to fill the city’s coffers. Parking districts with “paid on-street parking” are being proposed everywhere in San Diego, not just La Jolla. They are all providing 55 percent of the resulting revenue to the City of San Diego.
In addition to “paid on-street parking,” each regulation ” like time limits, loading zones, valet parking zones, diagonal parking, and residential parking permits ” adds additional unexpected consequences. We all must be very careful and thoughtful about any plan that comes forward. Sometimes, not taking any action is the best option. That is what has happened in the past, and perhaps for good reason. It may not be as simple as the idea that people don’t want change ” it may be that it is the right thing for the most people!
The residents in La Jolla have had a recent experience where the community developed a 10-point plan to address traffic, which resulted in the City of San Diego pulling out the construction of the “throat” as a stand-alone project. They neglected to follow through on any other part of the plan. There is a likelihood that the City of San Diego could pull the “paid on-street parking” out of the LJCPAB “framework” and do that as a stand-alone project, neglecting any other aspect of the proposal ” especially so when we consider the City of San Diego’s dire financial climate.
I urge you to participate in the debate!
” Darcy Ashley is a resident of Bird Rock.