Enforcers Had Just the Ticket to Play Grinch on Christmas : Services: Parked cars blocked street sweepers on Dec. 24 and 2,835 citations were written, many to motorists who don’t know they got them. A resident wants them dismissed.

It was the holiday season, a time for family get-togethers, feasts, visits from friends--and plenty of parking tickets.

That’s how it went in the Alamitos Beach neighborhood in Long Beach, where, on the day before Christmas, there was more chaos on the streets than in the malls.

The day began like any other festive occasion. But before it ended, more than 150 people got parking tickets, which they don’t know about because a neighbor trying to help out picked them off everyone’s cars, which has caused a major headache for City Hall, which now is in the uncomfortable position of explaining why Long Beach gives out nearly three times as many tickets on Christmas Eve as on any other day.

This unorthodox Christmas story begins at Robert E. Fox’s home on 2nd Street.

‘Twas the day before Christmas and Fox’s home looked like a Norman Rockwell painting--a brightly lit tree, colorfully wrapped presents and a house full of friends helping cook a turkey. Then a sweeper moved down the street, followed by parking enforcers writing tickets as fast as children tearing open gifts.

“We went scurrying out of the house like cockroaches in the light,” Fox said.

“I had all these guests screaming and yelling. Everyone was running to their cars,” he said. “The neighbors all came out, and they ran to their cars. But there was nowhere to go. There were no parking spaces available.”

The parking tickets took Fox and many of his neighbors by surprise. They assumed there would be no street sweeping the day before Christmas, a day many people stay home from work.

“This was a sneak attack. Nobody was out there trying to break the law,” said Fox, president of the Alamitos Beach Neighborhood Assn. The neighborhood is bordered by Ocean Boulevard, 4th Street, Alamitos and Junipero avenues.

Since the congested south Long Beach neighborhood has a severe parking problem, Fox thought the tickets were unfair and began calling city officials, including City Manager James C. Hankla.

According to Fox, Hankla told him to pick up all the parking tickets in his area and send them to City Prosecutor John Vander Lans with a letter asking them to be dismissed “in the interest of justice and the spirit of the season.”

So Fox got on the phone, called six other area leaders, and together they collected more than 150 tickets.

Hankla could not be reached for comment. But Vander Lans said Hankla did not instruct Fox to pick up the tickets. In fact, Vander Lans said he would not be able to selectively dismiss tickets from one part of town.

“Whatever we’re going to do, we’ll be fair to everyone, not just one section (of Long Beach),” Vander Lans said.

On Dec. 24, parking enforcers tagging along with street sweeping crews gave out 2,835 tickets throughout the city, according to Melba Fabarez, a customer service supervisor who oversees ticket collections. Christmas Eve may be the highest street-sweeping ticket day in Long Beach, she said. Usually, the city averages 1,060 such tickets per day.

Fox argued that city officials used Dec. 24 as a day to make money. At $22 per ticket, the fines mean an extra $62,370 in the city’s coffers.

But city officials said the day is treated as any other.

“We have the same number of workers that day,” said Jim Kuhl, manager of the city bureau that includes street-sweeping enforcement. In fact, Kuhl said that because so many people parked on streets scheduled to be swept Dec. 24, work was slowed and many areas didn’t get cleaned.

“I live in Alamitos Beach,” Kuhl said, “and when I got home Thursday, a neighbor was mad because there were five cars parked on our street. The cars didn’t have tickets, and our street wasn’t cleaned.”

Meanwhile, the tickets that Fox picked off his neighbors’ cars have created confusion. City officials said they have received calls from people wondering if they got a ticket. A $27 penalty could be added to an unpaid $22 ticket. If the ticket is left unpaid, the Department of Motor Vehicles is notified and the amount is tacked on to future registration fees.

Although a second notice is automatically sent out to ticket holders, city officials said they are trying to go through all the tickets Fox collected and mail the car owners an additional notice explaining what happened.

“It’s turned into an incredible mess for the city. We’re now trying to figure out how to get hold of 150-plus people,” Kuhl said.

But the holiday ticket story may still have a happy ending. City Councilman Alan Lowenthal, who represents the south Long Beach area, said he hopes this incident will increase discussion about what to do with areas that have too few parking places.

“It’s a reasonable issue to raise,” he said.

Fox said he intends to go before the City Council on Tuesday and request that, in the future, Dec. 24 be exempted from street sweeping parking tickets. In 1987, activist Dan Rosenberg made a similar request to the council and was turned down.

This time, Fox said he has the backing of neighborhood groups across the city.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” said Fox, who was also a guest on a radio talk show last week that featured the parking ticket controversy. “The citizens of Long Beach felt abused.”

Fox echoed complaints by many that Long Beach planners allowed a development boom in the mid-1980s without properly estimating how the growth would harm neighborhoods. “That was the result of bad planning,” he said.

“(The parking ticket issue) is a small, but highly symbolic issue,” Fox said. “Is this the kind of message that Long Beach sends on Christmas Eve?”