Two supporters and two opponents of paid parking spoke during the public comment segment of the first meeting of the new Citizen-Council Parking Advisory Ad Hoc Committee.
The possibility of paid parking on Main Street Seal Beach is one of the issues that the Parking Committee is expected to examine.
District Five Councilman Nathan Steele was the first person to speak during the public comment segment of the Wednesday, Sept. 13, Parking Committee meeting. It was difficult for anyone to hear him until a city employee switched on the microphone at the podium. “I rise in support of paid parking on Main Street,” Steele said.
“I don’t do it because I want to be the ghoulish guy that ruins our small town character, but I do it because we have a fiscal hole in our budget,” Steele said.
He said that number one he would talking about what he called the cumulative $15-million deficit in the five-year forecast.
(“While the cumulative amount is approximately $15 million, it’s important to note that the City adheres to the adopted Balanced Budget Fiscal Policy that necessitates the adoption of a new balanced budget every year,” wrote Finance Director/Treasurer Barbara Arenado in an August email. “Because of the Balanced Budget Policy, the forecast is reviewed on a yearly basis.” For more on this subject, see “5-year forecast shows financial challenges,” at sunnews.org and “Are deficits in the city’s future?” at sunnews.org.)
“Number two, I’m going to talk about paid parking is good for business,” Steele said.
He said was counter-intuitive, but argued paid parking was good for business.
“And number three, I’m going to talk about the survey that I recently did showing that a majority of Seal Beach supports paid parking on Main Street,” Steele said.
According to one of Steele’s slides, he sent 7,946 emails to registered voters in Seal Beach. Of that number, 883 responded to the survey.
Steele showed a slide depicting the summary of the five-year forecast, taken from the Seal Beach budget for the current fiscal year.
According to Steele, the actual amount will be a different number than the cumulative number he provided “but it is handwriting on the wall and we need to get busy trying to fill that gap as soon as we possibly can,” Steele said.
“This means we need to raise revenue where possible and we need to cut costs where possible,” Steele said.
According to Steele’s slides, costs are increasing 7% a year while revenue is increasing 2% a year.
“Seal Beach is 97% built out,” he said.
“We don’t have very many growth opportunities in Seal Beach and so we need to somehow figure out where this $15 million is coming from,” he said.
He said the council’s number one job is to balance the budget.
“We don’t get the luxury of DC that we can write bonds and deficit spend year in and year out,” Steele said.
“We have to balance our budget every single year,” Steele said.
According to Steele, that’s why we’re talking about paid parking.
Steele argued that free parking isn’t free. “There is a popular conception that if we change [for] parking, people will stop coming to town,” Steele said.
“That has not been the experience of every other city on the planet that charges for parking,” Steele said.
He said he was using the work that was done by Donald Shoup, author of “The High Cost of Free Parking.”
Steele said he had studied other authors and he has looked at the professional groups that deal with mobility and parking in California, in Orange County, and around the country. “I kept searching for somebody who would tell me that free parking is good for business,” Steele said.
According to Steele, it costs the city something to provide free parking. “And it also attracts the wrong kind of parkers,” Steele said.
“People coming to the beach in our case will park on Main Street, get their beach toys out of their car, toddle on down to the beach and do their thing for a couple of hours or send daddy back up to Main Street to move the car if they want to stay longer,” he said.
“It’s not customers,” he said.
“These people are not there to do business in the restaurants, these people are not there to buy stuff from stores on Main Street, these people are there to go to the beach,” Steele said.
“We get employees from other businesses parking on Main Street as well,” Steele said.
He argued that free parking kept real shoppers and real customers away from the downtown area.
“They turn left on Seal Beach Boulevard and go up to Rossmoor because they know that Seal Beach and Main Street are going to be congested with parkers and traffic and all kinds of problems,” Steele said.
With 30 seconds remaining to speak, Steele showed some of the slides from his surveys in March and August. He said 71% of those surveyed in March opposed paid parking. In the August survey. His time expired before he could continue.
John Baker was the next speaker. Baker said he was a former business owner on Main Street. “I was there from 1980 to about 2002,” Baker said.
Baker said parking meters don’t scare people away. “They bring the best customers you can get,” Baker said.
“All I can say is, we’ve paid thousands and thousands of dollars for a consultant we don’t need,” Baker said.
“We need parking meters, plain and simple,” Baker said.
He said parking meters bring in people. “They come in, they do their business, they move on,” Baker said.
He said what scares people away is when they come here and they can’t park on Main Street because someone has parked there and gone to the beach.
He said in a letter to a newspaper he recently proposed diagonal parking on one street and parallel parking on another street, specifically on Eighth and Tenth streets.
Baker said he ran for City Council. He said people started screaming.
According to Baker, people argued that street parking belonged to them. According to Baker, he suggested they park in their garages. According to Baker, some people sublet that garage to someone else. “Well, we’ve got to check that, too,” Baker said.
“We’ve got to get those people to use their garages and not use them as a second, another residence,” he said.
He said the city’s code enforcement officers were not doing their jobs. He said people were not cleaning out their garages and are now claiming the parking spots in front of their houses are theirs.
“Well, we need to change that,” Baker said.
According to Baker, the city needs to make sure garages are empty to be used for what they are supposed to be used for.
Baker said he would speak at every session the parking committee has.
Peggy Lynch, a Seal Beach resident, said she opposed paid parking on
Main Street.
“My primary reason is, we’ve got a beautiful Main Street and I think parking meters are going to make it look junky,” Lynch said.
She said the city already has paid parking: parking the two sides of the pier, the narrow lot that is across from the shell shop and the parking on Electric Avenue.
“You already have a lot of paid parking,” Lynch said.
“And I don’t buy it that everybody goes to the beach and parks on Main Street,” she said.
“When I see people at the beach, they’re using the paid lot, so I don’t think I buy into that one,” Lynch said.
Lynch wanted to know when the poll conducted, what were the questions and who did they survey.
She wanted to know if it was done by an independent company or by someone who had a particular opinion that they wanted to promote.
She wanted to know if the city had considered other sources of revenue other than parking.
“It doesn’t have to be paid parking that’s going to junk up our neighborhoods,” Lynch said.
“There are other ways to make money and you guys are smart so I bet you can figure that out,” Lynch said.
Brian Kyle said he was born and raised in Seal Beach and had been here 70 years.
“I’ve been on two parking commissions,” Kyle said.
“This isn’t a parking commission that we’ve done in the past,” Kyle said.
Kyle described the committee as something “under the sleeve” that the city manager almost put away so the citizens couldn’t talk.
“I was on the Main Street Specific Plan,” he said.
“I was one of the architects for it,” Kyle said.
“The way Main Street was done by design, we did this with property owners, business owners,” Kyle said. “So don’t listen to everything you’re hearing.”
He said they were stacking the committee he was talking to.
He argued that the city manager, city employees, and consultants were stocked in the committee to convince people of one side of the story.
“I’ve had over 400 and some employees on Main Street. I’ve created over $50 million dollars in sales,” Kyle said.
(Kyle is the former owner of O’Malley’s on Main.)
“My first job was on Main Street at 10 years old,” Kyle said.
“I know Main Street. I know how the business community works. I know how it moves,” Kyle said.
“It’s like Rob, he has his coffee shop,” Kyle said. Kyle was referring to committee member Rob Jahncke, owner of Main Street Javatini’s and past president of the Seal Beach Chamber. The Chamber appointed Jahncke to serve on the parking committee.
“You get meters in there, he’s not going to get the guy that says hey I’m going to put 50 cents in and run in to get a cup of coffee or he’s going to get a $65 ticket,” Kyle said.
“They’re going to go to the places that have free parking,” Kyle said.
“They’re going to go over to Starbucks, they’re going to go over to Marina Pacifica, they’re going to go to Marketplace,” Kyle said.
“I really want this committee to open your eyes to what’s going on here,” Kyle said.
According to Kyle, he was denied appointment to the parking committee by a council member who was voted into office. He said the city manager got him eliminated.
This was apparently a reference to the City Council meeting of Aug. 14. At that meeting, District Three Councilwoman Lisa Landau named Kyle as her appointment to the parking committee. However, District Two Council Member/Mayor Tom Moore argued that it was not appropriate for Kyle to be on the committee as he owned a business that uses the city’s First Street lot as the committee’s decisions could be impacted by the committee’s recommendations, and also citing ongoing litigation between the city and the First Street business that Kyle co-owns. Landau at that meeting said it was unclear to her what the lawsuit had to do with parking on Main Street. Landau named Tim Rathmann, a geologist and environmental engineer who lives in District One to be her alternative representative on the parking committee.
Kyle said the District Attorney was looking into the matter. (The Sun has confirmed that Kyle has filed a complaint with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.)
Turning back to parking issues, he said the city had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants. “I’ve been on all the committees,” he said.
“I think what we have is a really good system,” Kyle said.
“People can come down after Labor Day, like right now you can go down Main Street, you’re going to have 18, 20 parking spaces wide open,” Kyle said.
“We’re at the beach here; when it’s 110 degrees, we’re going to get packed,” Kyle said.
“We’re a half a pie,” Kyle said.
“The other half is the ocean,” Kyle said.
“You’ve got to realize that the people that come down here from Leisure World; they’re
coming down here from Rossmoor; they’re coming down from the Hill, they’re running in, getting coffee, getting baked goods; they’re coming in and out,” Kyle said.
He argued against doing what every other town does.
“There is other ways of financing,” Kyle said.
He said he didn’t think the city manager’s office had done a good job.
“We’ve got big box stores out in Rossmoor,” Kyle said, apparently referring to the Shops at Rossmoor center (which is in Seal Beach).
“She should be spending time to get somebody in there to get a tax base,” Kyle said.
“Now I have a business I took over, it’s down on First Street. I’m paying 800% more rent. I have sold more in one month than the previous guy did the whole year,” Kyle said.
According to Kyle, the parking machines on First Street, “they’re horrible, horrible experiences.”
He said they were especially horrible for the elderly.
“They don’t work,” Kyle said.
He told the committee they didn’t want him on the committee because he was not a guy who was just going to say yes.
According to Kyle, when parking meters were discussed “back in the day,” the money would have stayed on Main Street.
“I spent over $60,000 on Assembly Bill 1600 [for] in lieu parking for the city of Seal Beach,” Kyle said.
“Where’s my money? Where’d it go?” Kyle asked.
He said there was a parking lot by the Bank of America building. According to Kyle, someone should have offered the parking lot owner a tax write-off.
City Clerk Gloria Harper said his time was up.
