Meetings to Discuss Permit Parking for Workers Kick off Wednesday

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

January 10 -- Some residents with preferential parking permits may have to share their streets with nearby business employees under a proposed pilot program that is getting serious attention at City Hall.

If approved in its present form, 156 daytime permits will be sold to businesses along Pico and Ocean Park boulevards, where workers have complained for years about being shut out by restricted parking. (see related story)

Nearly half of the permits would be issued for neighborhood streets near Santa Monica College.

A permit would be good weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and only on the street it is issued for. The program would be reviewed after one year.

The City Council is expected to consider the idea on February 28. But first, the public will have a chance to review the proposal at three “area-specific” meetings.

The first is to be held this Wednesday, January 11, and will focus on the Sunset Park neighborhoods surrounding Pico and Ocean Park boulevards between Cloverfield Boulevard and 10th Street.

The second meeting will take place the following Wednesday, January 18, and will focus on the area surrounding Pico Boulevard east of 28th/Stewart Street.

Both meetings will be in the Thelma Terry Building at Virginia Park, 2200 Virginia Avenue, and will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Across town, a third meeting focusing on the Montana Avenue neighborhoods will take place Thursday, January 19, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., at the Montana Branch Library, 1704 Montana Avenue.

But it doesn’t look like that part of the city will be getting employee permits.

The upscale Montana Avenue area had been considered for the pilot program, but City planners seem to feel that the current situation there is working well enough. They recommend leaving things pretty much alone -- as long as residents-only permits don’t expand north to Alta Avenue and the streets beyond, which are currently unregulated.

If the council adopts staff’s recommendations, it will represent a major move on an issue that has been gridlocked inside City Hall for years.

The City began considering employee parking permits sometime around 2000, spurred by complaints from small businesses pinched by the spread of preferential parking -- zones where only residents can park for more than two hours, if at all.

Because many of the businesses are in older buildings with few on-site parking spaces, for years they had relied on un-metered side streets to park their employees.

But neighbors seem to react with fair amount of resistance and suspicion every time the subject of employee parking comes up.

Although many residents say they sympathize with the businesses, some worry that employee parking permits could lead to losing the preferential zones they had petitioned for and won.

And so, the issue has been a political hot potato for City officials caught in a bind between competing interests.

In 2001 the City Council turned down a recommendation to allow limited employee parking in a newly created preferential parking zone in the North East section of the City, but asked staff to look into the idea further.

Two years later, the City’s Transportation Division issued a report that included recommendations for employee day-use permits in a number of areas. But the council wanted staff to go back and study the idea again, one area at a time.

Then, in November 2004, the council came under attack when it approved recommendations by the East West Commercial Corridor Parking Task Force -- a council appointed committee -- that asked for limited employee parking on some residential streets.

Angry letters were printed in local newspapers and flyers went out accusing two council members -- who were up for reelection -- of wanting to take away the residents' preferential parking.

"It was a bit of an election issue," Councilmember Richard Bloom told The Lookout early last year, adding that there had “been some misrepresentation” of the council’s action.

Bloom was not one of those targeted.

Finally, when the matter came up again in June 2005, the council gave the tentative go-ahead for a pilot program and asked staff to work out the details. Now, six months later, staff has returned with recommendations for the council to consider.

The report that includes maps and detailed information of the proposed program can be found on the City's Web site.

Comments can be emailed to City Transportation Planning Associate Ruth Harper at ruth.harper@smgov.net or given in person before the City Council when it takes up the matter, tentatively scheduled for the evening of February 28.

If approved, the permits will likely be issued by lottery. The suggested yearly price for a permit is $120.