Right
to Park Act: Ballot Initiative 2012, Brea, CA
Repeal the City Council
Resolution to ticket Brea Residents on Street Sweeping Day!
Summary: If passed,
this measure would repeal Resolution No. 2009-64. That resolution prohibits parking
on all residential streets on designated days for street sweeping purposes.
Unfortunately, we have found
it necessary to bring back the petition to rescind the parking enforcement on
street sweeping day since the City Council majority voted to continue the enforcement
program on street sweeping day. Using the City Survey as reference for the majority
of residents in approval of the program, the City Council voted (without a public
vote) to continue the street sweeping enforcement program. Also, the ticket
price has increased from $38 to $42. click here to see
an overview of the City Council actions
Take
ACTION - Signatures needed!We need your help. We are not
a paid organization (we are your neighbors, Brea residents) and our signature
collection is being done completely by fellow Brea residents. In order to get
this item on the ballot, we need signatures. Without signatures, the street
sweeping tickets will continue under the current City Council. Please help us
by getting a petition from us and collecting some signatures with us. This is
a grass-roots effort that needs your help. Click
here to request a petition or contact
us by email (who
we are)
Brea
had already swept at FOUR times the rate required by
any federal or local agency and complied with all regulations PRIOR
to the enforcement program. That means that the only reason to
have a parking enforcement program is to raise revenue by taxing the residents
with ticketing. There is absolutely no merit to the city's claim that any
agency requires Brea to sweep both sides of every residential street every
week with a parking restriction in place. Brea now sweeps and enforces parking
restrictions more than any other city in all of Orange County by sweeping
both sides of every street, every week, with a parking enforcement policy.
Why does the city council believe that Brea is the dirtiest of all cities
in Orange County?
From the NPDES website: "It is recommended that schedules include minimum
street sweeping frequencies of at least once a year". " Institute
a parking policy to restrict parking in problematic areas [not ALL residential
streets] during periods of street sweeping." Click
here to view NPDES website.
From the Orange County Best Management Practices (OCBMP) website: "Best
management practices indicates that street sweeping frequency should be based
on factors such as traffic volume, and that parking restrictions should be
considered in problem areas." "Provide minimum monthly sweeping
of streets". "Consider increasing sweeping frequency based on factors
such as traffic volume, land use, field observations of sediment and trash
accumulation, proximity to water courses, etc." Click
here to view OCBMP document.
Residents
and visitors to Brea's neighborhoods have no place to park on street-sweeping
day!First, let it be clear thatwe are not against
clean streets and street sweeping in Brea. Afterall, the City Council could
have voted to allow ALTERNATING-SIDE SWEEPING. But, they didn't allow
that because it wouldn't raise as much revenue if people have a place to put
their car on street sweeping day. We are against the City Council targeting
Brea residents as financial prey to balance the budget by passing an unfair
"curb tax" (without citizens' vote) that tickets Brea residents
who require street parking on street sweeping day. Not all residents have
long driveways or garages ... many residents require on-street parking and
pay for on-street overnight parking passes, but their right to park on the
streets is revoked each and every street-sweeping day when they are forced
to evacuate their neighborhoods. Since September 2009, the City Council majority
has chosen to ignore the hardships of Brea residents. click
to see transcripts of Matters from the Audience
UPDATE: Although the City Council reduced the street sweeping parking restrictions
down to 2-hour windows, cars are still are given no place to park, so no visitors
are allowed and residents are forced from their homes every week.
The
resolution was enacted to generate revenue. The resolution was
enacted to balance the budget and the original projections of revenue are
off by more than 90%. The program only generated $50,000 in its first fiscal
year instead of the reported $1.3 million and $700,000 "conservatively"
projected by the City Manager. The following years' projections of $1.4 million
annually are completely incorrect and now revised to closer to $200,000. This
City Council majority planned to ticket 48,000 of its own residents to
raise $1.4 million annually with a curb tax and hoped residents wouldn't
speak up! click
to view the July 2009 resolution
UPDATE: Even though the City Council and City Manager said that the price
of tickets would not be increased when the policy was implemented (because
it wasn't about rasing revenue), the tickets have now increased from $38 to
$42.
The
resolution is not about the NPDES. It is not about clean streets
and it is not mandated by a government requirement, even though the NPDES
is repeatedly cited as justification for the resolution (see
the postcard here). According to the City Manager, Brea had "already
swept its streets at twice the rate required by the NPDES". Actually,
Brea sweeps at more than four times the rate required by
the NPDES, and there is no requirement that streets should be clear of parked
cars on street-sweeping day. The fact is that Brea had already complied
and exceeded all local and federal requirements for street sweeping prior
to the resolution.
This
resolution was passed based on misinformation and grossly inaccurate projections.The original recommendation provided by the City Manager to the council
was filled with bad data, misleading information and egregious errors
and was incorrect by over 90% in his estimates. The City Manager continues
to provide the council with misinformation and calculations that are off by
over 90% to 300%! click for more errors
regarding the resolution (there are many!)
The streets
are not cleaner because of the resolution. While some residents may be
looking at their own street and noticing that it appears cleaner, most of
us have the same clean streets we had when the sweeper used to drive around
our parked cars.
The overall cleanliness of Brea streets has not been significantly impacted
by the enforcement program. As a matter of fact, based on the existing debris
data, there has been NO increase in debris collected since parking restrictions
were enacted. click here to see
the debris data
Waste
of resources!
At the May 3, 2011 Study Session it was revealed that Brea's Public Works
DIRECTOR (total annual compensation of over $212,000 paid by YOU, the taxpayer)
spent time parked in front of a Brea resident's property waiting for the street
sweeper to pass to determine if a resident requesting a parking exemption
qualified by having multiple cars parked on their street. Once the street
sweeper passed, the Public Works Director made the judgement to deny the parking
exemption since there were no cars owned by this resident parked on the street.
Besides the obvious "there were no cars because residents have to leave
their property on street sweeping day", what a tremendous waste of resources
having a high-level paid Director sitting in their car waiting for the street
sweeper.
Thecarbon footprint...forget about Brea being a "green" city!
The addition of two enforcement vehicles following the street sweeper for
over 15,000 miles per year to issue tickets adds an additional 9+ TONS
of CO2 into our air and tons of additional pollution. This
is reason alone to abandon the enforcement program. click
here to see the carbon footprint data
Are
Brea's signs valid? A review of the appeals of the tickets that
were issued shows that the majority of tickets are being issued to visitors
to Brea who have no idea that there is a ticketing program in effect.
There are many signs posted at the entrances to neighborhoods where a motorist
would have no reasonable opportunity to read the posted sign when turning
into a neighborhood. While watching for crossing traffic and turning into
a tract, the posted sign is only feet from the intersection, giving the motorist
almost no opportunity to even see the sign and no opportunity to read the
details on the small lettering. As the State of California had ruled in a
prior case (Homes on Wheels), the State ruled that signs like these are a
"classic trap for motorists".
UPDATE: After months of complaining about the lack of signs and incorrect
information printed on the signs, the City has updated all of the city street
sweeping signs to include an ambiguous "this tract only" (although
the word "tract" is obstructed by a bolt on every sign). Originally,
the signs in Brea did not specify that the parking restriction applies to
a "tract" or "neighborhood", so how could a visitor to
Brea reasonably understand that a sign posted as simply "No Parking"
applies to a street several blocks away from the posting of that sign? Even
now, the reference to a "tract" is ambiguous since it's impossible
to tell where one starts and another stops. We obtained a legal opinion
that says that the statute (V C Section 22507.6) is being interpreted unconstitutionally
by the City and that in order to comply with due process requirements
the City needs to post signs at the intersection of all streets regarding
the sweeping and the City should be responsible for reimbursing the people
unfairly convicted. A Class Action against the City to ensure the reimbursement
can be filed.
This
resolution was adopted with NO input from the public. This decision
was made behind closed doors in a Study Session (these are never recorded
or televised) and based on a seriously flawed recommendation with staff. There
was no public hearing and no opportunity for the public to provide
input until it was too late. Why were residents not consulted? Why were we
not given the opportunity to vote on this matter? click
here to read articles from the OC Register
This
is a one-size-fits-all, extreme parking policy that is seriously flawed.
Why wasn't a smarter program, like alternating sides of the street
in other cities or one that included hardship exemptions proposed?
Why weren't residents who clearly have a parking problem at their residence
and pay for overnight parking passes exempt? This would clean our streets
just as effectively. However, it would not have generated as much revenue!
Why must EVERY street in Brea in EVERY unique neighborhood be swept
EVERY week, when many neighboring cities sweep twice per month? The
Orange County
Best Management Practices indicates that street sweeping frequency should
be based on factors such as traffic volume, and that parking restrictions
should be considered in problem areas, but Brea's plan ignores these
recommendations.
Access
to Brea's schools, public parks and neighborhoods are severely restricted
by this resolution. Want to host a playgroup or a have a birthday
party or just invite a friend over? Can't be on street-sweeping day! Any visitor
to a neighborhood must find a driveway in which to park, or they will
risk being ticketed. The City Council has refused to exempt school streets
from ticketing, and parents who are volunteering or attending school functions
have already been ticketed. When asked when the street sweeper usually comes
to the Brea Plunge (which requires almost entirely on-street parking), the
parking enforcement officer replied that in comes on Tuesday some time between
8 am and 2 pm. When told about swim lessons, the parking enforcement officer
suggested that parents "not take swim lessons on Tuesdays to avoid
ticketing." As parents bringing kids to swim lessons know, the lessons
are five days a week, Monday - Friday.
The
burden to certain residents to comply with this resolution is overwhelming.Residents who have small to nonexistent driveways (Ash Street Cottages,
the hills, cul-de-sacs) and those with multiple drivers have no place to park
on street sweeping day. These hardships disproportionately affect families,
stay-at-home parents, the self-employed and retirees. The City Council majority's
insistence that we should just listen for the street sweeper and rush outside
to move our cars in time is NOT a real solution. Even though residents apply
and pay for overnight parking passes, the City Council refused to recognize
this as a parking situation that would need to be addressed on street sweeping
day. Instead of providing exemptions, the City Council implemented a program
with NO exemptions in order to generate more revenue. Update: although
an exemption application has been established, the granting of such exemptions
is subject to an arbitrary review process and costs residents an additional
$20 per year for the right to park at their home (yet another curb tax added
on to the $20 that resident already pays each year for an overnight parking
pass). click
here to learn more about hardships
Why
do we have to ticket at all? When Brea wanted to start a water
preservation program, they simply asked the residents to help, resulting in
a decrease of over 10% of water usage. The city did not first implement a
program to fine residents using too much water. Simply asking the residents
to comply produced positive results. Why not just ask residents to help with
street sweeping by removing their cars first? Since this was a revenue-generating
resolution, the first action was to enact an extreme program to ticket
as many residents as possible. Is this the new "Spirit of Brea"?
Voluntary parking restrictions work in Fullerton and Yorba Linda, where
no cars are ticketed on street-sweeping day.
Brea
residents with limited parking on their property will have problems selling
their homes. Many Brea neighborhoods have severely restricted parking
situations. These developments were approved by the City, and residents purchased
these properties knowing they had the right to park on the street. The
right to park on the street has been revoked by this resolution. This
serious problem will have to be disclosed when residents attempt to sell their
homes, rendering many properties unacceptable to certain buyers (especially
families).
Residents'
vehicles are put at risk when parked in public lots.Since
ALL street parking is prohibited throughout several adjacent neighborhoods
on street-sweeping day, residents are forced to move their cars to various
public lots and parking garages (up to a mile away from their homes) to avoid
ticketing. This resolution not only denies these residents access to their
personal property on street-sweeping day, but it puts their vehicles at risk
of vandalism and theft since they are left unattended all night every
week.
So,
now that there's a budget gap again, what's next?Now that
the street sweeping program has not generated the amount of revenue that had
been wildly anticipated, what cash-grab is the City Council going to go
after next in order to bridge the budget deficit? Perhaps the City Council
will pass a resolution to ticket people walking their dogs on the city sidewalks
because a few dog owners failed to clean up after their dog and it generated
18 complaint calls per month (this was the number of complaints received about
cars parked in the street on street-sweeping day). They could argue that it's
about cleaning up the city, but it would really be about raising revenue.
Such an across-the-board prohibition would be unfairly punative and burdensome
to all dog owners. Should only dog owners stand up to voice their disapproval
of such an ordinance, or should we all stand up to fight a law that is unjust?
Perhaps this parking resolution does not affect you since you have a long
driveway or not many cars/drivers in your family. However, what if the City
Council arbitrarily decided to issue tickets for something that was unavoidablefor you?
Let's
put an end to business as usual: the City Council should look elsewhere to
balance the budget. The amount of waste in Brea is significant
due to continuously increasing salaries and programs that cost Brea citizens
a lot of money.
It is time for ordinary citizens to get involved and cut down on this excessive
spending and waste. Also, we need to put an end to the current City Council
majority's exclusive reliance on staff reports filled with faulty data. Bad
advice leads to bad decisions!
Follow the links and review
the documents provided and you will see how this program was implemented and
how it affects the city's residents. You will see residents speaking at city
council meetings regarding the hardships this resolution has imposed on them.
You will see how the City Council majority has continued to dig in their heels
even though the data and evidence points to serious flaws in the resolution.
You will see how the City Manager has continually made error after error and
the City Council majority continues to 'take his word' and rely on the staff's
(faulty) research. Don't take our word for it. Look at the information we have
provided.
