Question 6: Should Seal Beach reduce or eliminate parking fees in the beach lots?
Matthew Terry
The city’s got to stop treating the beach lots like revenue pinatas.
The city’s current approach is to squeeze every penny out of these lots. The problem is, while that’s a good idea on high demand days, it’s a really bad one on low demand days. No one benefits from empty parking spaces in the beach lots. That hurts the community and businesses.
The best way to manage this is dynamic pricing. We need to make the price to park in the beach lots lower on low demand days, and higher on high demand days. We can’t have people who could use the beach lots decide they don’t want to use them because the city is charging summer pricing in the winter. Then they park in the neighborhood, and the beach lots are empty and our neighborhood is full of cars.
Paid parking is a tool to regulate parking when demand exceeds supply to ensure that parking is available to people who need or want it the most. The revenues are just a byproduct of this approach and should never be considered when managing parking because we might end up with underutilized lots like the beach lots in the winter. This is the golden rule of managing paid parking, and I’m a firm believer in approaching it this way.
Also, the city needs to broaden the way it looks at all of the parking in Old Town. Whether it be the beach lots, Main Street, the lots adjacent to Main Street, the 8th Street lot or residential parking, right now the city approaches each as its own separate, isolated piece. All parking in Old Town needs to be looked at from the perspective of how it fits into the broader puzzle because it’s all connected, since any change or underutilization affects the whole.
And there is a way to do this. I was on the Citizen-Council Parking Advisory Ad Hoc Committee. So I know the city has access to a lot of really useful data to be able to make better decisions on approaching parking in Old Town as a whole. Vote for me because I’m the detail-oriented type of person who could actually utilize this information in a way to ensure that we are using the parking that we have as best we can.
Visit mattforsealbeach.com for more information about me and my platforms.
Perla Mendoza
Before we begin changing parking fees, adding more virtual meters, or making other major changes, I believe we should first maximize the parking resources we have.
Seal Beach has three beach parking lots and three more parking lots off Main Street. We also have other public parking options, including free evening parking from 5–10 p.m. in the public lot at Central Avenue and 8th Street. The parking in the paid lots and on Main Street allow for only two hours of parking. In other words, if visitors want a leisurely lunch or time in a salon, the City doesn’t allow for it.
Our beach lots give visitors an opportunity to park once, stroll Main Street, shop our local businesses, have a leisurely lunch or dinner, enjoy the pier and beach, and experience the Old Town charm we all love—without constantly watching the clock, worrying about a ticket or moving their car.
Most Old Town residents already walk to Main Street and the beach, so this is an opportunity to make our existing public parking easier for visitors to find and use. This will relieve the pressure from Main Street and help keep the businesses vibrant while minimizing visitor parking on the residential streets.
There is a financial benefit as well to drawing visitors to the all-day parking. Paid public parking generates revenue for the City. So, before we talk about increasing fees, raising or lowering rates, or expanding paid parking elsewhere, we should first ask: Are we doing everything we can to maximize what we already have?
Let’s change signage before we change the system. Our parking rules need to work for our residents, businesses, and visitors. It only takes one ticket to lose business in the future.
My suggestion: change the Beach Parking signs to Public Parking signs and add more signage directing the visitors to all day parking where parking is plentiful and they can enjoy their time here. Try it out; see if it works; reassess.
This is my opinion, but I want to hear yours. Please reach out and share your thoughts with me at perlaforsealbeach.com or call me at (714) 471-8388. Vote for Perla Mendoza.