The Citizen-Council Parking Advisory Ad Hoc Committee’s first formal action on Wednesday, Sept. 13, was to select Margo Wheeler of District Five to be the committee chair. The selected vice chair was Ken Husting of District Three. Wheeler was appointed by a council member who advocates paid parking on Main Street. Husting was appointed by a council member who opposes paid parking on Main Street.
The committee members included District Two Council Member /Mayor Tom Moore, who opposes paid parking, and District One Council Member Joe Kalmick, who supports paid parking.
Seal Beach Police Chief Michael Henderson chaired the meeting until the chair and vice chair were selected. (For details of the public comments, visit sunnews.org.)
The selection
Committee Members Ken Husting, who was appointed by the mayor, and Margo Wheeler, who was appointed by District Five Councilman Nathan Steele were both nominated to be chair of the committee. (Steele also supports paid parking.)
During the first round of votes, Husting suggested he and Wheeler abstain from voting for themselves. Wheeler apparently agreed.
Neither won a majority of votes.
Asked what they should do, City Clerk Gloria Harper said they would have to go around again.
At that point, Ken Husting said he would be OK with Wheeler if she wanted to be chair.
Wheeler agreed.
Police Chief Henderson asked if there was consensus among the committee members to make Husting the vice chair.
No one objected, so Husting was made vice chair.
Presentation and discussion
Following the selection of Wheeler as the committee chair, Chief Henderson turned over the meeting to Wheeler, who in turn turned the meeting over to Julie Dixon, of Dixon Resources Unlimited, the city’s parking consultant. Dixon, who has been the city’s parking consultant since about 2017, gave the committee a presentation on the fundamentals of parking in Seal Beach.
Dixon went over a slide presentation, which was not available on the city website as of the Sun’s print deadline. Committee members had handouts of the slide presentation.
Dixon said Seal Beach actually had parking meters on Main Street in 1963.
“They were removed in 1976,” she said.
Those dates were not listed in the presentation, but Dixon said she wanted everyone to have the information.
She said in 2002, Main Street lot parking rates were approved at $1 an hour.
She said in 2003, which was also not on the document, was when the California Coastal Commission approved the installation of parking meters in and around Main Street.
According to Dixon, the approval was for five years.
Dixon said basically, the city never proceeded with the installation.
In 2016, the parking lot beach lot rates were increased from a maximum $6 a day to a maximum of $10 a day, Dixon said.
She said the City Council had approved $600,000 to update the parking technology throughout Seal Beach.
In 2017, the Dixon team came on board.
Dixon said the city tried several different types of parking meters and pay stations.
She said that was also the time that the Seal Beach Police Department upgraded parking enforcement technology. Before that, Dixon said, parking enforcement officers were writing paper tickets.
That system was replaced with an automated system.
Officers still put paper on your windshield, but you could pay electronically, according to Dixon.
She said that was when the city started having community town hall meetings in the Council Chambers.
In 2017 and 2018, the consultant hosted several meetings to hear feedback from the public. Dixon said her company had returned to the council with updates.
In 2018, they launched the parking pay stations in the beach lots, new signage and implemented mobile payment.
“That’s also where we began to use license plate recognition technology or what you’ll always hear us call LPR technology,” Dixon said.
“That was also an important transition for the Police Department because we transitioned from the right-sided Jeeps, where they used to drive along with the chalk sticks, and started to leverage the license plate recognition technology to, again, become more efficient, especially throughout the city,” Dixon said.
She said the city also updated the Municipal Code, which Dixon said include outdated regulations on the books.
Seal Beach hired the city of Long Beach for meter maintenance and support services.
Dixon said that generated parking savings for the city.
She said that was the start of the automated parking permitting system in Seal Beach.
In 2019, Seal Beach established an agreement with Farmers & Merchants Bank in which they reconciled parking money. Dixon said this also saved Seal Beach money and staff time.
That same year there was another code update.
In August 2020, parklets were installed on Main Street. Parking permit renewal was delayed that year. In December 2020, the online parking permit system was launched.
Dixon said that provided relief to city staff.
In 2021, the city introduced the head-in parking rule for the beach lots. Dixon said that was also the year that Seal Beach applied for the Southern California Association of Governments grant for micro shuttles.
In 2022, Data Ticket provides the citation and permit management services on behalf of Seal Beach.
Dixon said during the pandemic, all parking support services were transitioned to the SBPD. She said while pretty much every department in Seal Beach has a hand in parking in some form, ultimately parking is managed through the police department.
In early 2023, the single-space parking meters were replaced with pay by plate technology and the introduction of pay-by-text. The parklets were removed from Main Street on Feb. 1.
Rob Jahncke, the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce representative on the committee, said he thought at one time there were meters on Main Street.
Dixon repeated that meters were installed in 1963 and they were removed in 1976.
Dixon said from the information they were able to find; meters were never re-installed on Main Street since they were removed.
Dixon said they found the original records that day, Sept. 13, 2023, and said she would work with the chair to provide those reports to the committee.
Dixon also said they are working on a Coastal Commission application to increase the beach lot rates, which she said haven’t been raised since 2016.
Chair Margo Wheeler of Leisure World asked Dixon to explain her background to the Parking Committee.
Dixon said in 2016 a vendor had presented a turnkey system to the city. She was approached at a parking convention that same year. She said that turned into a conversation that turned into Dixon Resources coaching the city.
As for Dixon Resources, Dixon said she was the first parking enforcement officer for the Sheriff’s Department back when she was in school at UC Santa Barbara. She described it as the most densely populated city west of the Mississippi.
Dixon said she started her business in 2012.
They also went through the binders that each of the committee members had. This information includes parking space occupancy data.
According to Dixon, the theory is that when you are near or at 85% occupancy, you are near or at parking capacity.
“The ideal is that you’re always going to have one or two parking spaces available by block face so that there is always that ability to just kind of pull in, occupy the space, and go about your business,” Dixon said.
She said that was important when you talk about turnover.
She said the theory is that when you hit that 85%, you need to start making parking management changes.
According to Dixon, they have information about parking going back to June of 2020.
Chief Henderson said the cost recovery information was included for the committee members’ reference. He said if there are questions about finances, staff can come back at a later meeting.
Committee Member Tim Rathmann, who has an office above Main Street, said there was more data to dig into. He said he found the amount of effort impressive.
Dixon said the data should be there back through 2020.
Committee Member Matthew Terry, a resident of Old Town, said there is a filter for the last three months.
“One of my concerns is the pandemic definitely affected parking,” Moore said.
“So, in my view, the pandemic ended mid-2022, so the data we’re looking at is really only the past year,” Moore said.
Someone else said they were thinking the same thing.
Moore said he was hoping to see 2018, 2019 data, before things slowed down versus now. “But we don’t have the comparison, really,” Moore said.
“Yeah, unfortunately, we don’t have that data,” Dixon said.
According to Dixon, it was no surprise that in the summer months Seal Beach was in the higher averages.
According to Terry, they didn’t have data on the 100 block lot or the two lots on Electric Avenue. “Is that not getting collected?” he asked.
Dixon said it has to do with the layout of the Main Street lot. She said that was another layer that would be coming on to the online tool. She was referring to the information that is available to the committee members.
Dixon said they were leveraging the payment data in those locations to calculate the occupancy.
Dixon said she would be sure to bring that information to the committee.
Moore said when he goes to Main Street and he can’t find parking, he’ll just go into one of the paid lots. He said it would be helpful to see the data on how full the paid lots are in combination with Main Street.
Outreach plans
Committee also discussed, but took no action on, public outreach and survey opportunities.
Dixon said they could post a community survey by Oct. 1. She said the survey would be posted for three to four weeks. She said that would require a marketing campaign.
She suggested having a town hall meeting in October if the Parking Committee was so inclined.
Dixon said the city had not had one of those parking meetings since before the pandemic. She described the meetings as very popular.
She said that could be another good way to get folks to respond to the survey.
Wheeler raised the issue of identifying survey participants.
Dixon said “stuffing the ballot box” happens, but the reality is that you are looking for the community member to identify the most impact for them.
Since they were talking about Main Street, Dixon said she would hope that they would wear the hat of a business owner or an employee.
Jahncke said the Chamber would be happy to support her in any way the Chamber can.
Husting also expressed concern about the accuracy of the information from the proposed survey. He suggested a more focused approach on the businesses on Main Street.
“You can always ask them to list their name and email address and contact information,” Dixon said.
According to Dixon, some folks appreciate being able to provide anonymous feedback.
But she said she would leave that to the committee.
She said you can always ask for their contact information and they can always check the box that says, “I don’t want to hear from you.”
Jahncke said he would think an email confirmation of someone’s input would not be an unreasonable request.
Moore suggested asking for the name and address of a Main Street business.
Kalmick suggested an overview of what pay stations can do, referring to people who don’t want to pay for parking for just a few minutes.
Dixon said there have been a lot of updates to the technology. She said she encouraged the city to keep short-term parking spaces. She said there was an opportunity to have free parking for 10 or 15 minutes. She suggested updating business rules.
Dixon said there has been a lot of feedback from businesses that say they cannot serve their customers in just two hours.
Husting said it was a matter of people actually using the mobile app or going to the pay station.
Dixon said Paso Robles initiated something called the customer service parking model, where you get two hours for free but you have to register your license plate.
Jahncke asked if the purpose of the survey was to come up with the policy or to present a policy and see what the feedback is.
“You tell me,” Dixon said.
She said it is really about the needs of the primary users.
Wheeler said there are residents of Seal Beach who say they don’t go to downtown Seal Beach because they can’t find a place to park.
According to Wheeler, they might want to include those people, who she had described as “the discouraged,” in the survey.
Dixon said they want to be able to look at parking impacts.
According to Dixon, there are some community members and visitors who are willing to pay for the citation.
Terry asked if there was a way to get parking engagement information from people parking on Main Street.
Dixon said it was difficult, but you could go old school with the person out there with a clipboard or a phone interviewing people.
She didn’t know if there would be representative samples.
Moore said he liked that idea, because those are the people that are the city’s users.
Dixon confirmed that a draft of the survey was available for the committee members.
Jahncke asked what their goals were.
Moore asked what other lots might be available to increase parking inventory. He also wanted to discuss a parking structure, though Moore believed it wasn’t financially feasible.
Husting asked about the in lieu parking fund.
Henderson said there is in lieu parking in Seal Beach.
Husting asked for the balance for that fund.
Henderson said staff could prepare a presentation and come back to the committee with that information.
Husting said that in Los Angeles, money paid into that fund is reinvested for the purpose of parking.
According to Husting, lieu parking means that when someone can’t provide the required parking, they pay the city whatever the city establishes as the fee.
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