Long Beach Delays Vote on Parking Ordinances

City Council members on Tuesday postponed a vote on several proposed ordinances designed to alleviate parking problems in residential areas, saying the proposals need some fine-tuning.

The proposed ordinances, once adopted, could lead to:

-- Parking permit programs that would allow only residents to park overnight on neighborhood streets;

-- Requirements that garages be inspected when a home is put up for sale to ensure they are used for cars instead of storage;

-- Permission for owners or renters to park their cars in front of their driveway curb cuts.

The proposed ordinances do not automatically impose the parking regulations in any area. Instead, they would become law in a neighborhood where parking is a problem only after two-thirds of the residents request it.

Saying there was some fine-tuning to be done, the council postponed a vote for three weeks. Among the issues the council wants to resolve is whether to change the hours when parking would be by permit only. Councilman Wallace Edgerton suggested that instead of setting the hours from 2 to 8 a.m., the council set them from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Although the council appeared ready to adopt the ordinances, most members acknowledged that the programs will not solve what is a serious problem in many of the city’s neighborhoods.

“I think we all know this won’t solve the problem,” said Edgerton, whose south Long Beach district is short of parking.

Councilwoman Jan Hall agreed that the proposals are “not perfect,” but they will “make people who are using garages for other things, use them for cars.”

Originally, the proposals called for 72-hour temporary overnight parking permits for guests. That has been changed to seven-day guest permits. Details about the guest permits, such as how to get them, have not been established.

Also, the ordinance allowing for overnight parking permits now specifies that two-thirds of the neighborhood must request the permits. The addition was made at the request of the Belmont Shore Improvement Assn. Most of the 400 homeowners in the oceanside neighborhood oppose parking permits, according to the association’s representatives.

The three proposals are part of “a toolbox” of eight options the council began reviewing last year. So far, two of the eight proposals have been adopted. One allows for the conversion of parallel parking to diagonal parking, which would create more spaces. The second allows for a $30 annual permit that lets residents park in their own neighborhoods, exempting them from one-hour and two-hour parking restrictions.

Rita Reggio, who lives near Obispo Avenue and 10th Street, suggested another option. In her neighborhood, residents last year asked that city workers paint white lines on the street showing people where they can park “so they don’t hog two or three spaces,” Reggio said. The white lines have worked well, she said.

Reggio added that her neighborhood also would like to implement an overnight parking permit program, but residents want to set the price of the annual permit themselves at $15 per home.