Front-Yard Parking Ban Could Force Cars to Keep Off the Grass : Ordinance: The City Council will hold a study session tonight on a proposal to force Ventura residents to keep their cars in garages or on the street.

If you’re used to parking your car or truck on your front lawn and you live in Ventura, beware. Starting soon, you may have to change your habit.

Venturans would be prohibited from parking in front yards or side yards facing a street, under a proposed ordinance that will be considered today by the City Council.

“We want to preserve the character of the neighborhoods,” said Karen Bates, a senior city planner who is coordinating the proposed ban.

“In order to keep up an aesthetically pleasing neighborhood, we have to get people to park in their garages, not on their lawns,” she said.

The council has scheduled a 6 p.m. study session on the draft ordinance. The meeting is open to the public, but no public comment will be allowed. The ordinance will not be voted on until a series of public hearings are conducted.

But gauging from the number of vehicles parked on lawns in Ventura neighborhoods one recent day, the proposed zoning change may run into some steely opposition. For some families who own several vehicles, garages and driveways are just not enough.

“We’re right next to the traffic light and this is a busy street,” said Florentino Medina, 70, whose 1977 Chevrolet Nova sat in the middle of his front yard at the corner of Johnson Drive and Bristol Street.

His family, Medina said in Spanish, owns three pickups that his sons drive to work every day. At night, the trucks occupy the driveway and single-space garage.

He could park his Nova on the street, Medina said, but he’s afraid to do so. “I’m afraid to open the door, with the cars coming down the street so fast.”

“When it rains a lot, I get stuck in the mud and it is hard to get out, but it is still the best place to park,” he said.

Medina’s next-door neighbor, Paul McDonald, 33, disagreed with the city’s contention that lawn-parkers create neighborhood eyesores.

“If it were a junked car, I can see a reason to have it removed, but what’s the problem if it’s a vehicle in operating condition? There’s nowhere else to park. Sometimes I park on my lawn too,” McDonald said.

And Medina and McDonald aren’t alone in their neighborhood, an eclectic, single-family enclave that features both elegant stucco houses and run-down, wood-framed bungalows.

In almost every block, it seems, there is a car taking up green space. Some lawns are scarred by tire tracks.

This upsets people such as Raynell Markham, 47, whose brown stucco house stands out for its manicured lawns, intricate landscaping, stone facade and the black lion statues guarding the entrance.

“The cars are everywhere,” she said, as she worked in the garden at her home near Frawley and Elizabeth streets.

Next door, three cars are parked next to each other, one on the street and two more in a small yard. Across the street, an old, blue Volkswagen sits in another neighbor’s yard.

“Of course I don’t like it,” Markham said. “I think it looks bad and it is unnecessary to have cars piled up two or three deep like we have behind us.”

But one of Markham’s neighbors, who declined to be identified, said he had good reasons for not parking on the street. The 1965 white Lincoln and the 1967 black Cadillac parked on the lawn are part of his classic car collection, he said.

“I don’t think the city should be telling me what to do with my yard,” the man said. “Where else am I going to keep my collection?”

The study session on the proposed zoning ordinance will be discussed at 6 p.m. tonight at City Hall.