Residents in two Orange County cities could soon start getting more parking tickets as a host of officials across the county contract with a company to increase efforts to enforce parking rules and street sweeper violations.
The new contracts come as cities in the county struggle to generate revenue while grappling with rocky budgets.
Some municipalities are also debating asking voters in November if they would be willing to raise taxes to support public services.
[Read: New Taxes? Increasing Revenue in Orange County Amid Budget Shortfalls]
It also comes as cities across OC are struggling to enforce parking on their own.
Those contracts are going to the SP Plus Corporation – a company that works with cities across the country to enforce parking rules.
Last week, Ernesto Rennella, vice president of SP Plus’ Municipal Services Department, told Stanton officials – the latest city to contract with the company – part of their success is their customer service.
And their ability to generate revenue for cities.
“The revenue generation that we’ve seen across the board for all these different cities have exceeded the expectations of our client,” Rennella told officials at the July 23 Stanton city council meeting.
Rennella pointed to Fullerton, a city that has been struggling financially for years, as an example of the company’s ability to bring in money.
“We have also increased their revenue as far as the citation generation goes and our presence also has helped decrease issues that are happening during certain hours at night,” he said.
In Fullerton, it’s gotten to the point where residents in the southern part of the city – a predominantly working class area with a lot of overcrowded living situations – have complained to city staff and officials that they keep getting ticketed.
[Read: Will Fullerton Residents Keep Getting Cited for Blocking Street Sweeping?]
During Fullerton’s May 7 meeting, Munish, a resident who didn’t give his last name during public comment, criticized the city viewing citations as revenue and said using a third party company to issue tickets creates a “dangerous” situation.
“This would be a terrible precedent to look at citations as a way to basically tax residents to bring in money,” he said. “A for-profit entity will want to give as many tickets as possible to make money.”
Fullerton officials contracted with SP Plus in 2019 to help them enforce street sweeping, overnight and downtown parking rules.
Prior to enforcing the rules, street sweeping citations generated about $33,000 a month in Fullerton, according to a city staff report.
That number surged to over $128,000 in September last year.
Between November 2023 and March 2024, citations generated over $101,000 a month.
In May 2023, officials in the college town decided to continue a discussion on whether they want to make changes to how street sweeping runs in the city or change enforcement rules amid complaints, with Mayor Nick Dunlap even suggesting potentially reimbursing residents.
That discussion could potentially be taken up at the August 6 city council meeting.
Stanton Cracks Down on Parking Violations
Following Rennella’s remarks, Stanton officials unanimously approved a $213,087 one-year contract with SP Plus to enforce the city’s various parking laws between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. as part of a pilot program.
“Over the past several years, the Public Safety Services Department has experienced challenges in providing continuous, effective parking control services in the evening and early morning hours,” reads a staff report.
“Other cities within Orange County and beyond that have faced similar challenges in their parking control efforts.”
While the company will enforce the rules at night seven days a week, the city’s public safety services department will continue to enforce street sweeping violations, illegal parking and other restrictions from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Stanton City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn said in a Tuesday email that it was difficult to predict exactly how much revenues would go up, but it could shoot up by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We are estimating additional revenues of $160,000 – $200,000 for citations issued between the hours of 6pm – 6am in a 12 month period,” she wrote.
During the 2023-24 fiscal year, over 10,000 tickets were issued generating over $300,000 in revenue for the city, according to the staff report.
The contract is expected to end in July 2025.
Stanton isn’t the only city in OC that recently contracted with SP Plus to up parking enforcement efforts.
Facing Deficit, Orange Boosts Parking Enforcement
In May, Orange officials approved a $2.5 million five year contract with SP Plus that staff expects to generate up to $10 million in revenue over the course of the contract.
At that same meeting, Orange officials publicly struggled with what public service cuts to make as they stared down what was initially expected to be a $19 million budget deficit.
[Read: Can Orange Leaders Make The Hard Choices To Tame a Looming $19M Budget Deficit?]
Beyond Orange and Stanton, Laguna Beach officials are looking at increasing parking rates in the coastal city and Brea officials earlier this year directed staff to resume street sweeping parking enforcement after resident complaints.
Charlene Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Orange, did not answer questions on how much money the city was generating from parking citations before contracting with SP Plus.
At the May 28 meeting, Police Chief Dan Adams said that in the past five years averaged between $800,000 to $1 million dollars parking citations.
Mayor Dan Slater said residents have been asking for parking enforcement and that revenue expected from tickets was “icing on the cake.”
“There’s no question that the best part of all is that we’re going to come out revenue ahead.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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