8:00am | It’s one of the most common gripes repeatedly offered up by resident after resident in Long Beach: Street parking here is an utter — and often financially draining — fiasco.
At least, it is for the average resident who has to cough up $50 every time he or she receives a street-sweeping ticket. For the city, though, ticketing vehicles parked in the street during posted restricted hours appears to be a lucrative endeavor.
In a story on an item appearing on today’s council meeting agenda, the Press-Telegram reports that from 2007 to 2010, the city has boosted its coffers by $7.5 million to $9 million per year by issuing street sweeping tickets.
Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske is requesting that the city manager research the cost and potential benefits of installing automated license plate recognition technology on the city’s fleet of street sweepers. The high-tech cameras would record digital photographs of vehicles parked in violation of posted street sweeping hours.
This, the councilwoman told the PT, would free up city resources because the city’s parking enforcement personnel would no longer be required to trail behind the sweepers and manually issue tickets for vehicles blocking the sweepers’ paths. It would also provide the city with a time-stamped photographic record of where a vehicle in violation of the two- to three-hour-long parking prohibitions is parked.
Schipske’s request is inspired by state legislation fresh on the books permitting municipalities to attach the high-tech cameras to street-sweeping machines. The law, AB 2567 authored by Assemblyman Steve Bradford, D-Gardena, also bans the practice of ticketing vehicles that are parked in a restricted area after a sweeper has already swept the street.
“This would be really clear that the only time you would get cited is if you were parked when the street sweeper approached to get to that space,” she reportedly said.
The automated license plate recognition systems are costly. Prior to purchasing enough cameras to use the technology citywide, Schipske would like the city to initiate a pilot program to test their effectiveness.
The city is already spending roughly $900,000 on 30 mobile and 12 fixed ALPR systems for the police department, a move approved by the City Council on Feb. 15.
Getting back to the hefty sum of money the city is raking in by ticketing drivers who may have nowhere else to park or who accidentally oversleep or simply space out on being parked on the wrong side of the street, Schipske said that street sweeping should be aimed at keeping the streets clean rather than generating revenue.
Tonight’s council meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.