It’s the talk of the town in Seal Beach. Almost everyone who lives here has complained about it. It’s essential, but annoying. And it can be costly. I’m talking about parking. Or lack thereof.
For residents, parking is a pain in the patootie for a couple reasons. The summer months are brutal and even though most of Old Town has one-hour or residents-only parking on one side of the street, it can be impossible to find a parking place anywhere near your house.
For visitors it can be frustrating as well. There are a few places you can park on my street where the one-hour/permit sign can’t be seen. So, come to Seal Beach for the day and end up with a big fat parking ticket on your dash.
Things lighten up with street parking a bit after summer is over, but if I ever go out at night I know there won’t be street parking when I return. I do have a garage—one car—but that is where our bikes and camping equipment and Christmas decorations and gardening supplies live. When we have had a two car garage (in the past) we were able to park a car there.
So, parking can be frustrating on a daily basis for anyone coming to Old Town. But we have another obstacle that interferes with parking: Street sweeping.
My Old Town street, all two blocks of it, is swept TWICE a week. No parking from 9-12 one side of the street on Mondays, the other side Thursdays. The ticketing for this is relentless. The jeep-like vehicles sit idling at the corner from 8:45 a.m. on, just waiting for the magic hour when they can begin ticketing. They are literally ahead of the street sweeper, giving tickets with lightning speed.
It’s a funny thing with “city services.” Every city is different.
Take street sweeping. Our neighbor to the south, Huntington Beach, has a very different philosophy for cleaning the streets. One of our daughters lives on Main Street in Huntington Beach. She is seven blocks from the ocean and about four blocks above the downtown area. Main Street continues on to the Police Department and Huntington Beach High School, so it is a well-traveled street.
Guess what? It has street sweeping twice a month. And, the street looks pretty clean. I suspect it gets a lot more traffic than my single block of 14th Street, too.
City officials here in Seal Beach say that residents like and want this aggressive street sweeping policy, so I may be way off the mark by complaining about it. And I certainly wouldn’t mind as much if there was anywhere to move my car TO on street sweeping days.
And one last rant in regards to parking … Main Street. Since I work on Main Street and live on 14th Street, nine times out of 10 I walk to town. But sometimes I want to stop in town on my way to or from another errand in my car. Another frustrating experience!
This is what takes the cake about Main Street – I have been in two different Main Street businesses when I have heard the employees running around, discussing how they have to move their car a foot so the chalk on the tire won’t show. So, how many of the Main Street business people park in the street parking?
As a consumer, if I can’t find a place circling the block or trying the lot off Main, I leave. Which is too bad, because I would much rather spend my money here than at a corporate store like Target. The lot off Main only accepts coins, by the way, while most of the beach cities have long-ago instituted meters that accept credit cards.
So, what’s the solution?
I don’t know offhand, but I think we can do better in Seal Beach. If any readers have ideas I would love to hear them.
Dixie Redfearn is the editor of the Sun Newspapers.
