After years of debate and delays, San Diego City Council\u2019s Land Use and Housing (LU&H) Committee unanimously endorsed a proposed two-year pilot program along city beaches toughening enforcement of existing regulations banning oversize vehicles from parking longer than 72 hours on public streets. The committee\u2019s recommendation on the Neighborhood Parking Protection Ordinance, proposed by District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, will be forwarded to the City Council for final approval. “The proliferation of illegally parked oversize vehicles on city streets is a public safety, quality of life and environmental issue that has acute impact on San Diego\u2019s visitor-serving beach and bay communities,” said Faulconer. “Constituents report vehicles parked illegally in front of homes and businesses for weeks \u2014 or even months \u2014 at a time, taking up valuable parking spaces, blocking view corridors and limiting access to driveways and alleys. This is an appropriate time to revisit an ordinance that provides more effective tools for the city to address illegally parked oversize vehicles.” The proposed\u00a0ordinance requires drivers of RVs and large trucks, as well as vehicles towing boats, to obtain permits available online to park overnight in beach and bay neighborhoods. The proposed program implementing the new oversize-vehicle ordinance mandates four parking enforcement officers to watch for vehicles at least 22 feet long or 7 feet high. The ordinance would allow officers to issue citations immediately, without directly confronting vehicle occupants, if vehicle-parking permits are not visible. Councilmen Todd Gloria and David Alvarez, representing districts 8 and 3, respectively, expressed concern the pilot program would only affect beach areas,\u00a0noting the problem exists inland as well. Both, however, sided with the committee majority in favoring the ordinance after being told by Matt Awbrey, Faulconer\u2019s deputy chief of staff, that San Diego police favored restricting the pilot program to beaches only initially due to significant additional costs involved\u00a0with providing signage, enforcement personnel and public outreach to expand it citywide. “The Neighborhood Parking Protection Ordinance is meant to be cost-recoverable,” said Awbrey, adding it could be expanded citywide later if the two-year trial period\u00a0is successful. LU&H Committee chairwoman and District 5 Councilwoman Lorie Zapf attached an additional condition to the new proposed ordinance calling for it to include boats and trailers. “Clearly, a lot of the problem is boats and trailers \u2014 they\u2019re just a hazard,” said Zapf. “A lot of our public right-of-way is being used and abused, almost to the point of there being free storage on our public streets.” A number of beachfront residents, most from Pacific and Mission beaches, testified at the Nov. 28 LU&H hearing about safety, environmental and crime hazards \u2014 as well as obstruction of public views \u2014 posed by illegally parked oversize vehicles in their neighborhoods. “Thomas Edison once said, \u2018There\u2019s a better way to do everything \u2014 find it,\u2019 ” said Pacific Beach resident Louis F. Cumming,\u00a0who petitioned\u00a0the LU&H committee to support the new ordinance. “This could be the theme of today\u2019s meeting.” Cumming testified the ordinance, as proposed, doesn\u2019t go far enough in defining \u2014 and restricting \u2014 oversize vehicles. “This ordinance should include all non-motorized vehicles including trailers, campers, boats, dune buggies, ATVs and jet skis,” he said. La Jolla community planner Joe LaCava endorsed Faulconer\u2019s proposal. “The key is that it\u2019s really a problem in the beach areas,” LaCava said. “Let\u2019s test it there, and not get caught up in a citywide proposal. Let\u2019s get this buttoned down, see how it works, then go from there.” Mark Underhill, a software business owner, longtime Mission Beach resident and RV owner, testified against certain provisions of the proposed oversize-vehicle ordinance. His family, he said, goes on frequent trips out of town, and the proposal could pose problems for RV owners who travel like him. The 72-hour time limit on permits, he argued, could unreasonably limit the number of trips responsible RV users like himself could take. “If I\u2019m gone for five days I would have to apply for two permits, which is limiting because I\u2019m only allowed 24 a year,” Underhill said. District 1 City Coun-cilwoman Sherri Light-ner expressed concern that sufficient notice hadn\u2019t been issued prior to the LU&H Committee hear-ing to RV owners and related groups given that the hearing closely followed the Thanksgiving holiday when many\u00a0RV residents\u00a0might travel. The issue of an ordinance restricting oversize vehicles on city streets has been discussed since December 2004 when it was first heard at LU&H. In 2008, a pilot program and citywide ordinance were brought before the City Council for consideration, but the item was tabled and never voted on due to city budgetary constraints. The cities of Encinitas, Del Mar, Coronado, El Cajon and the Unified Port of San Diego all have existing ordinances in place regulating parking of oversize vehicles.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After years of debate and delays, San Diego City Council\u2019s Land Use and Housing (LU&H) Committee unanimously endorsed a proposed two-year pilot program along city beaches toughening enforcement of existing regulations banning oversize vehicles from parking longer than 72 hours on public streets. The committee\u2019s recommendation on the Neighborhood Parking Protection Ordinance, proposed by District […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":275175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Oversize vehicles may see new limits in beach, bay communities","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12360,11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duplicate","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}