re: Parking

Josh is right on the personal responsibility issue. I moved to Long Beach about 6 months ago and chose a place with a garage exactly for this reason. It costs me more, sure, but it's well worth it: for I don't have to come online and complain that I can't park! Also, here's a few other tips: walk more, don't stay out so late, buy a bicycle, make friends in the neighborhood. If all else fails, move!

By James

re:parking

I moved to Long Beach because I couldn't afford to live in any other surrounding cities by myself. I have a lot of friends that live here, I stay out late with my car only because of work or school. Otherwise i ride my bike. I cannot afford anymore than I already have...which is no garage and a small studio. My personal responsiblity and resonsibility as a community member is to take action in complaining, raising awareness, and trying to solve this parking issue. It affects me and others who maybe already live by your tips, aren't as fortunate to have extra money after paying bills and buying groceries, and want a damn place, anywhere, to put our car!

James, I beg to disagree.  Unless the garage has been properly permitted to be used otherwise, it must be used to park a working and properly registered vehicle.  You can check with the city's Code Enforcement department for further information.  Check for yourself rather than being "pretty sure" of your information.

By Ron

Yes, I bought a OYO without a garage, ... at the time, my life was in a crisis, and I didn't have the luxury of hunting for as nice a place *with* a garage.

With that said, the city shortsightedly will not fix the 2nd district's parking problem so long as they generate a ton of parking ticket revenue behind the lack of parking.

I've emailed a bunch of times with Broc Coward, Suja's Chief-of-Staff.  From him, I got this info:

1. Parking Structures are too expensive, period (My take: The city is clearly too shortsighted to consider that if there were parking structures like those in Manhattan Beach or Santa Monica, the rebirth of a vibrant business district would generate enough new tax revenue for the city to pay for the structures.

2. Broc: "The idea that in the 2nd District you can park near your home is  a thing of the past."  When did this "unwritten law" get enacted?

3. No to preferential parking:  "The city's planner's don't like that idea."

4. Make street sweeping once every two weeks, and change the times so that you dont have to move your car at 4am?  No, the businesses don't want later street sweeping that would interfere with their customers parking near them.

Bottom line, since Suja took offiice, nothing has changed in the awful parking conditions. When you look at how low voter turnouts are for local elections, you can't really pretend we have a democracy.  

And the aggressive parking enforcement is a business killer, ... look at all the boarded up storefronts on Broadway.  Customers stay away from areas where they are either going to get ticketed, or where it takes forever to find a parking space.

I went to a nail appointment yesterday, Saturday, on Broadway, near Temple.  The only available spot that wasn't a red zone or loading zone near the nail place was sign-aged for "Max. 2 Hrs. parking." After getting my nails done for $12, and shopping for and buying a dress at a neighboring shop for $30, I return to my car, and see a ticket for $40!  Well, that will teach me to linger at the clothing boutique!  So what will happen next week? I will watch my car and the time more closely, and leave under the 2 hour limit. Result: the clothing boutique will lose my business.

Isn't that great?  The city's overboard aggressive ticketing kills off neighborhood business.  Plus, wouldn't it be more to the benefit of fostering a good business environment to have let me keep the $40, and let me spend it in a store, where it would do much more economic good than just adding to the city's general fund as a parking fine?  I pay approx. $2500 in yearly property taxes, and a little under $1000 in tickets a year.  Isn't that great that the city puts an extra tax penalty on the working people like myself, which will probably result (in a few years when the real estate market comes back), in me leaving this area for a place to live that actually likes its productive working residents.

Isn't it contrary to what the city should be doing? The city should be helping and encouraging a middle class to stay in Alamitos Beach.  Instead the hostility of the city to residents without garages to park in, will eventually drive those residents out.  And when a deteriorating neighborhood is the result, the city has itself to blame for creating conditions that oppress and drive out the hard-working middle class that is the economic lifeblood of any urban neighborhood.

I pay a lot in taxes and fines, and for my tax revenue, the only city services I receive are more parking enforcement officers hired to give out even more parking tickets.  What a direct funding of our own oppression!

So far, in spite of this awful predatory ticketing, I love this neighborhood and my nice neighbors, and look at the city's shabby treatment of its best citizens as a cost of living in so nice an area.  But at some point, someone's going to convince me to leave, rather than be just another masochistic tax and fine victim of city government. Thanks Bob, Suja and Broc!

Venting about this is perhaps the only way to deal with this insanity. I'm done!  :)

(It does amaze me that for all the unpleasantness of the parking mess, I *do* love this area and *really* want to stay here, and I just want to have a government that does some good rather than just put the squeeze on us financially)