Commentary : Forces for Pay Parking at Beach Have Heads in the Sand

The specter of having to pay to park at the beach has not yet reared its ugly head in San Diego.

The city remains one of the few remaining coastal communities in California where the public’s legal right to unrestricted beach access is not abridged by what essentially amounts to charging admission.

But that unrestricted access may be in jeopardy.

Next month, the Public Facilities and Recreation Committee of the San Diego City Council will consider a recommendation by the Mission Beach Town Council to implement parking fees in all public beachfront lots on the Mission Beach isthmus, both on the ocean side and on the bay side.

The recommendation is one of several the town council came up with at its Oct. 12 meeting with a group of affluent South Mission Beach homeowners, who complain that parking and traffic in their community are getting worse each year.

The homeowners also complain that the two parking lots at the southern tip of the isthmus, next to the jetty, have become popular hangouts for dope-dealing and underage booze-swilling gang members--specifically, members of an all-black brotherhood of Southeast San Diego rowdies.

Charging for parking, the town council reasoned, would help alleviate both problems. The flow of traffic into Mission Beach would be reduced because the prospect of pay parking would discourage some potential beach-goers and encourage others to use public transit.

And the gangs would move on to some other beach or maybe back to their home turf, pay-parking advocates say, because they won’t be able to afford the proposed $3-a-day parking fee.

This reasoning is so flawed, so illogical, it’s a wonder the San Diego City Council committee is even considering the Mission Beach Town Council’s recommendation.

First of all, the Mission Beach parking lots are going to fill up regardless of whether or not there’s a fee, particularly during the summer. People are still going to cruise up and down Mission Boulevard, looking for a vacant space. And, if they fail to find one, they’ll try again the next day, the next hour.

Just look at the state and county beaches in North County. Many of them already charge for parking--and access-road traffic is as congested as ever.

Second, the chances that pay parking will keep out the riffraff are slim to none.

Just ask police how many drug- and alcohol-related arrests they routinely make in the parking lots of the San Diego Sports Arena and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--both of which have long charged for parking.

And third, the recommendation smacks of racism. The parking lots in Mission Beach have always attracted young people in the mood to party. In the past, most of the revelers were blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer types whose bodaciousness was condoned by the community through its silence.

But now that the blacks have arrived, the community is all of a sudden up in arms. It makes no difference that only a small percentage of these blacks are gang members: All last summer, police made just two gang-related arrests. It’s almost as if the community sentiments are that black is black, and Mission Beach is--and should stay--white.

What really disturbs me about the Mission Beach Town Council’s recommendation, however, is the very concept of paying to park at the beach.

Time and time again, California lawmakers and coastal commissioners have affirmed the public’s right to unrestricted beach access.

Yet virtually every coastal community in the state has effectively taken away that right by charging for parking in public beachfront lots.

Granted, for most people three bucks isn’t a lot of money. It certainly isn’t for the residents of South Mission Beach, many of whose homes are assessed at upward of $1 million.

But, for some people, $3 is a lot of money.

It’s bad enough, not being able to afford living on the beach. Why punish people further by making it unaffordable to even go to the beach?