For decades parking in Seal Beach has been a frustration for residents, business and visitors.
The Seal Beach City Council on Monday, Sept. 26 authorized the city manager to lease a parking lot located behind the Pacific Coast Highway Chevron station for $1 a year. The council also received and filed a staff report on proposals to improve parking in the Old Town area.
Those proposals include a public relations campaign to encourage residents to park their cars in their garages, increase parking enforcement and instituting permit-only parking.
Sean Crumby, director of Public Works and assistant city manager, wrote and presented the staff report. Another option would be to open the 10th Street parking lot to night time parking. According to the Crumby report, two situations aggravated the parking problem in Old Town. In July 2010, the Orange County Fire Authority complained about problems providing emergency services in Old Town because streets were too narrow.
“Numerous solutions were discussed and the preferred alternative was to paint red curbs at intersections to allow sufficient turning radius for the vehicles,” Crumby wrote. Crumby told the council Monday that the result was about 45 fewer parking spaces.
The second loss of parking spaces resulted from the construction of storm drains on Electric Avenue. This brought the number of lost parking spaces to 60 or more. The city removed the red curbs in front of the catch basins, reducing the number of lost parking spaces to 40 from 45.
Possible solutions
One proposed solution would be allowing overnight parking in the 10th Street lot. According to the Crumby report, a resident would be granted one parking permit from the city. Their car would have to be registered in Old Town. Cars would have to leave the lot by 9 a.m.
District 1 Councilwoman Ellery Deaton said police officers would be down there. She said the police presence should help deal with the vagrants in the area.
The Crumby report also looked at permit-only parking in Old Town. The report said this might not solve the problem. “If the community does indeed desire permit only parking, the largest obstacle to institute permit only parking will be the California Coastal Commission. The Coastal Commission views any limitation on parking as a limitation on access to the beach,” Crumby wrote.
“The city could require that garages be available and used for parking, but this could be viewed as an invasion of privacy,” Crumby wrote.
District 3 Councilman Gordon Shanks said garages are rented separately from apartments.
Mark Persico, director of Development Services, said the city attorney’s office had advised staff that Seal Beach needs to clarify the Zoning Code to require parking space and residential units to be” bundled” rather than rented out separately.
Parking enforcement
According to the Crumby report, the Seal Beach Police Department is using left hand vehicles for parking enforcement. “Since 2007, these vehicles have been staffed with two senior community service officers because a single driver cannot drive and chalk parked vehicles simultaneously,” Crumby wrote.
Interim Police Chief Robert Luman said he had contacted the city of Long Beach to borrow one of their left hand vehicles.
Luman said the department was also looking at “virtual chalking” technology that can be attached to a parking enforcement vehicle. He also said that Seal Beach’s six parking enforcement officers spend about 35 percent of their time in Old Town. Mayor Michael Levitt asked if the city had contacted the U.S. Postal Service about right hand vehicles. Luman said the Postal Service did not have surplus vehicles available.
