Laguna Beach officials are considering increasing parking meter fees, citation amounts and charging for some public parking in the city’s downtown area.
Currently, the efforts are mostly focused on parking around Laguna Canyon Road, downtown and reducing overflow parking in residential areas.
It comes as updates to the city’s parking plan have been ongoing since 2022 when council members created a subcommittee to research parking issues. Last year the council adopted a parking and transportation demand management report which outlined short and long term goals of the city.
It’s part of a city push to generate revenue off tourists and businesses – officials recently considered asking voters to increase hotel and business taxes in the upcoming November election, but faced pushback from some council members.
[Read: Laguna Beach Ponders Mix of Local, Visitor Taxes For Nov. Ballot]
At last week’s council meeting, Councilmember George Weiss said the city should add more metered parking along South Coast Highway, something he said is often brought up by residents.
“That’s something we can do to get more revenue from the daytrippers that are coming into town,” Weiss said at the July 23 meeting.
Council members directed city staff to come back with proposals for increased parking rates.
City staff was also asked to look into dynamic parking meter fees as a way to stop weekday visitors from parking in residential areas and instead pay for lower priced parking.
“An insufficient number of public parking spaces has caused spillover effects on surrounding neighborhoods due to visitors and employees of local businesses occupying available neighborhood parking,” reads the staff report.
A staff report outlined the city’s efforts to find underused parking lots to create more paid public parking spots.
According to the report, “23 private parking lots with a total of more than 630 parking spaces, some of which are already being offered as paid public parking by the property owner” were found.
Officials are also looking for ways to partner up with those property owners for non-regular business hour parking fees.
The report showed some completed projects like parking pay stations at the library, which will charge visitors after the library closes; electronic parking availability signs in some areas; an extension of the free local transit to Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads; and an expansion of places business parking permits could be used.
Some residents at the July 23 council meeting voiced concerns of overcrowding, something the council has been recently trying to find ways to curb.
“We don’t want to collect parking money and then build more parking structures to encourage more tourists to come into town,” said Gene Felder, president of Top of the World Neighborhood Association.
Another resident, Greg Viviani, said he was for an increase in parking tickets to deter people who park illegally and choose to pay for the low parking ticket.
Viviani also said that the more parking meters there are, the more likely it would be for visitors to park in residential areas.
Mayor Sue Kempf and Councilman Bob Whalen said they had not been previously successful in getting the California Coastal Commission to approve residential permit parking but that they would continue to work with them.
The city is also awaiting potential award money in August from the Orange County Transportation Authority for an extended use of the free trolley during the off-season.
Those routes cover north Laguna Beach to downtown, South Laguna Beach to Ritz Carlton in Dana Point and Laguna Canyon road to downtown.
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