Fullerton residents won’t have to worry about getting a ticket if they don’t move their cars on street sweeping day – for now.
But that could all change at tomorrow’s 5:30 p.m. city council meeting.
After increasing complaints about an uptick in parking tickets and a lack of spots to park from residents, officials in the college town narrowly voted 3-2 this month to switch to cleaning the streets every two weeks on alternative sides and suspend parking enforcement temporarily.
[Read: Will Fullerton Residents Keep Getting Cited for Blocking Street Sweeping?]
On Tuesday, officials will discuss how best to implement the change.
City staff are also recommending officials reinstate parking enforcement until they start replacing street sweeping signs – a task which they project to begin in February of next year, according to a staff report.
Mayor Nick Dunlap said at the Aug. 6 city council meeting that there has to be a balance on keeping local streets clean and taking into account how parking tickets are impacting local residents.
“There’s a way that we can continue to sweep the roads and make sure that we have clean streets, but also kind of work around that,” he said.
Councilman Fred Jung pushed back on the change at the Aug. 6 meeting arguing it will impact the city’s ability to effectively clean streets for the sake of residents.
“Populism is only important when it’s not on the back of the public and in this case, I think if you’re a law-abiding citizen and move your car effectively, it’s not that hard. I think you are indeed punishing those that are maybe scofflaws,” he said.
Jung and Councilman Bruce Whitaker were the dissenting votes.
Councilman Ahmad Zahra said residents are constantly complaining about the tickets because they want to follow the law, but can’t find a place to park.
“We want to make sure that at least there’s one side of the street where people can maybe move their cars. During the day, a lot of people are at work, so the likelihood of having spots open is very high, but when we’re blocking both sides, then people can’t move from one space to the other,” he said.
It comes as more cities in OC like Stanton and Orange start to privatize parking enforcement as officials struggle to generate revenue and face significant budget deficits as well as grapple with enforcing local parking regulations on their own.
Fullerton officials contracted with SP Plus, a parking enforcement company, in 2019 to help them enforce street sweeping, overnight and downtown parking rules.
[Read: Some OC Cities Privatize Parking Enforcement For Higher Ticket Revenue]
Privatizing parking enforcement as a way to boost local revenue has led to criticism from residents in Fullerton and the Orange County Register editorial board.
Fullerton officials in the past have argued not enforcing street sweeping parking rules impacts the city’s ability to thoroughly clean its streets which in turn curbs their ability to keep oils and pollutants out of their stormwater system.
Parking tickets aren’t the only way officials are considering generating revenue off of residents.
A host of officials across OC are asking residents in November to consider increasing the amount of money they pay in sales taxes to help float city budgets and services like public safety.
[Read: Voters Across OC Are Considering Tax Increases This Year]
Stepping Away From Citations
Fullerton’s privatization of parking enforcement temporarily resulted in the city generating four times as much on citations – with the amount of revenue decreasing since then, but still remaining significantly higher than before.
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.
Prior to enforcement, Fullerton issued an average of 1,300 tickets a month.
In the last six months, the average number of tickets went up to 3,000 a month, according to city staff.
A heat map created by the city shows a concentration of the citations happening in the south side of town, a high density residential area packed with apartments and limited parking.
Cleaning The Streets
Under the council’s direction, street sweeping will take place every two weeks on alternating sides of the road instead of every week.
With the change in street sweeping, the city is expected to pay $185,000 less on annual street cleaning costs, dropping the price of their street sweeping contract from $800,000 a year to $615,000, according to a staff report.
City staff initially projected it would cost the city $350,000 and take about 11 months to update the 5,000 street sweeping signs across the city.
A couple of residents at the Aug. 6 meeting pushed back on the decision, arguing that people need to take responsibility for the tickets they got and that the city has an obligation to ensure the streets are clean.
“If people don’t move their cars, the streets are never going to get clean and if you take away fines for not moving your car, then we’re losing money, and the streets are going to remain dirty,” said Maureen Milton, a resident, at the Aug. 6 meeting.
Stephen Bise, the city’s Public Works Director, said the change to biweekly cleaning will result in more pollutants going into the city’s storm drain system than before.
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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