I complained about a street sweeping item at City Council recently and that led to a meeting with the City Manager & Chief of Police… for reasons.
In that meeting Chief Radus provided me the data I was seeking and while I think this data, like much information, should have been available from the jump, I want to say I appreciate his, and City Manager Levitt’s, willingness to hear me out on my complaints while bringing the facts.
My concern was that the current policies detrimentally impact certain areas, because that seemed obvious, and it turns out the data backs me up.
These maps show where tickets are written in the City of Fullerton related to parking in the street while street sweeping is scheduled and the graph illustrates the number of said ticket;
If we were to overlay this map with a demographic map, it shows a disparate impact against lower income families despite the parking enforcement being enforced equally.
This is the “equitable” intersection of two policies hurting the people who largely can afford it the least.
On the one hand is the desire to keep trash & detritus out of our waterways, which is why the street sweeping happens in the first place. That's State law the City must comply with or be fined.
On the other hand is the anti-car agenda where middle & upper class activists & politicians decry personal vehicles in favor of transportation models that don't, can't, & won't meet the needs of the people. This is also a State issue regarding apartments & housing units with unrealistic parking quotas being mandated Statewide.
The intersection here is needing to clean the streets where people park their cars and have nowhere else to leave them.
That's where the tickets come into play because to government every problem is a nail so every solution is a hammer and that hammer comes down in the way of fines.
Or, in government parlance, revenue.
As far as I know the City, or State government for that matter, have never bothered to address the impacts here, how to mitigate them without unnecessary & unreasonable fines, or if the policies that got us here need to be revisited.
I understand the sweeping.
I even understand the tickets for recalcitrant people with options.
I have little sympathy if your garage is full & that's why you park on the public right of way. However, not everybody can be of above average means. Some people will always have fewer economic resources, often through no fault of their own.
If you can't afford to rent an apartment without a roommate because the rent is too damn high, it's a bitter pill to tell people that they're going to be fined for not being wealthy enough to have enough designated parking. Especially when this complaint has been raised for decades & ignored by big government activists.
If the answer is to find work that doesn't require a car, or move to somewhere more accommodating - ie a wealthier neighborhood - then the solution is just a middle finger from a place of economic privilege.
Sadly these issues, although not the fines, are largely above the pay grade of our City officials and require outside the box thinking that's anathema to government. Why would Council fix something when they can profit off of the misery and point fingers elsewhere.
This map is largely a State made mess, but don't expect our State representatives to lift a finger from their comfortable million dollar homes sitting in areas largely unaffected by the plight of the poors.
We'll see how Council grandstands and then largely does nothing to solve this problem soon but keep in mind if they truly cared I wouldn't be the reason Chief Radus made this information public. He went out of his way to answer my questions that Council couldn't even be bothered to ask.