Council Ponders Parking Puzzle Pilot Program
Lots of people have lots of cars. And the on-site parking plans of the 50s, 60, and 70s multi-family housing just don’t work anymore. We all know that. Even single-family neighborhoods suffer from the same issue – adults’ cars, their kids’ cars, and a garage full of crap.
In 2023 the Fullerton City Council directed staff to consider the issue of early morning parking prohibition, a device to keep people from parking on the streets overnight. The current situation is that certain streets with multi-family housing or old, pre-1940 houses have been granted a waiver. An applicant’s address could also get a one-year “hardship” permit with an extensive review process and a $250 permit fee.
After an 11 month gestation period, staff labored hard and gave birth to a “pilot plan” proposal that would keep existing street and individual waivers/permits, but that would make it easier, supposedly, to get a one year permit – with four one-year options.
The issue is Item #7 on the 3/19/24 Agenda consent calendar.
The staff report provides the usual entertaining history of a Fullerton topic, like downtown nuisance noise, that never seems to get fixed.
As usual there are options presented that are really just non-starters to make the desired option look better. Option 1 is to do away with overnight parking altogether – a surefire recipe for political disaster. Option 2 is to get rid of street/block waivers and also hardship permits, and let anybody apply for an overnight permit – another sure loser.
And so Option 3 (as described above) gets the brass ring, with the proviso that it be a 2-year pilot program to see what happens. As noted, staff is proposing a streamlined process, online portal, etc., etc., with one goal being to help disadvantaged neighborhoods (of course “disadvantaged,” like “underserved” is code in City Hall for Latino, so that’s an interesting use of the word). This option begs the question: if the permit process could be streamlined why wasn’t it – a long time ago? There is no mention of the new permit fee amount.
The staff report contains a long list of possible additions that could be made, presumably to help a City Council that can’t be trusted to come up with its own.
What I think is really interesting is that there is no option for doing nothing. Not every snake or green-glowing rock needs to picked up and examined, and I get the impression that there is a political undercurrent here. Commonsense suggests that adopting a revision for the purpose of allowing more cars to park overnight will still annoy some residents who may not like others parking in front of their house all night – especially in the vicinity of under-parked, older apartments.
In my neighborhood it would be a solution in search of a problem. If everyone on my block parked a car on the street overnight it would be fine. We don’t. But we could and it would be a non issue.
Similarly the street sweeper is the weekly bad joke. All the thing does is throw and rearrange the loose gravel around from the damaged street. Meanwhile the revenue collector trawls behind looking for victims who forgot about the schedule. That seems to be the actual purpose.
Don’t know much about where street debris ends up. In the ocean.
If rather my street be a street and not debris. But I guess that’s me.
It’s also a non-issue for people living on Fullerton’s new Pallet Apartments in the UP corridor.
Hey, that’s transit-oriented development, buddy.
I suspect Zahra and Charles are pushing this.
Doing nothing is the best course.
Smells of those two dummies. Didn’t Shana district recall her for trying to put more street parking on Associated? Guess she doesn’t learn so good for a college professor. Professor of Public Health. Sounds lame.
Yeah, where did this come from?
There are a few folks all in favor of NO overnight parking and I bet the vast majority have plenty of parking in their long driveways. When the ban was first proposed, and passed, there were not many familes with 2 or more cars. Plus not very many apartments, duplexes, and triplexes.
Since my wife passed several months ago my whole family has moved in and we can park 4 cars in the garage and driveway but that leaves 3 cars that must park on the street.
They banned overnight parking in Cerritos. It is a pain in the ass.
Yes, landlords and tenants love it. Permanent home owners don’t.
Guess who votes.
You didn’t take the time to read it did you? He said “It is a pain in the ass”. Pay attention! Stop drinking Zahra Kool-Aid!
Just a FYI, since I have seen this picture used before when discussions of Fullerton Parking come up, the street in the picture is not in Fullerton, it’s the 1500 block of West Juno Ave. in the City of Anaheim (near Ball Road and Euclid).
maybe dont have 10 cars? last thing the city needs is to turn into santa ana where you cant park in front of your own house