Santa Ana Cashes In On Meter Program

The city of Santa Ana’s 2-year-old parking-meter program--the scorn of many a car owner--has become so successful that officials are considering extending it beyond the downtown business district.

“The money has been coming in like crazy,” said Roger Kooi, manager of the city’s downtown development.

The 628 silver-colored, 3-foot tall, bubble-headed meters are raking in nickels, dimes and quarters as well as money from parking citations. Officials say the meters have become the envy of other Orange County cities: Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and San Clemente are the only others with parking meters.

Business is so good in Santa Ana that city officials find that they underestimated the cash flow from their downtown parking enterprise. Despite having several street sections shut down for repairs, Santa Ana garnered an extra $96,000 this year from its meter program for a total of $297,000.

“People plug meters all the time even on Sundays when parking is free,” Kooi said.

To help funnel more money into the city, the City Council has hired meter technicians with the authority to ticket parking offenders. The technicians, who will repair, monitor and collect from the meters, will also slip tickets onto windshields.

Meanwhile, the city plans to add 25 more parking meters and the county has asked Santa Ana to maintain meters in one of the county-owned lots.

“The meters have been good to the city,” Kooi said.

A single meter can take as much as $6 a day, said Kooi, whose office overlooks 4th Street, where the bulk of the meters are located. The rest are scattered along Civic Center Drive and between Broadway and Bush Street. So far, none of the meters have been vandalized.

Ironically, Santa Ana had yanked out its original meters in the late 1970s when merchants complained that they discouraged shoppers from buying at downtown stores. They argued that shoppers preferred free parking at nearby malls. But members of the Downtown Santa Ana Business Assn. changed their minds when they discovered that employees and other business owners were using the free parking spots rather than valuable customers.

“There was virtually no parking for customers,” said Teresa Saldivar, who owns a jewelry story on 4th and Broadway. “I was even guilty of using the free parking spaces because it was so convenient.”

So the association appealed to the city to reinstall the meters to control the flow of drivers. By that time, the city had dismantled its program and no one was available to collect the coins and to repair them. A single jammed meter became a major headache. But the city pushed forward with the project.

When the program was first launched, Kooi found himself repairing the machines and spending several Sundays collecting coins from the meters.

“Everybody thought I was crazy, dragging myself from meter to meter collecting all these coins,” Kooi said. “But somebody had to do it.”