The Redondo Beach city council voted 5-0 Tuesday night to adjust its municipal code to formally allow residents to re-park their cars during street sweeping hours after the sweeper and the city’s enforcement car has gone by.
The amendment was proposed by Police Chief Joe Hoffman after he studied the issue, following the police department’s July 25 lift of the longstanding courtesy – due to a rising time gap between the sweeper and the code enforcement car. The delay made it hard to tell if cars were moved and re-parked or just illegally parked when the sweeper went by.
Hoffman did a ride-along last week on a street sweeper and consulted with code enforcement officers to put forth a new policy.
The adjusted law, Hoffman said, has long been unspoken.
“As it turns out, it was created as an unofficial city policy about 30 years ago and just never codified,” he said.
Councilmember Paige Kaluderovic expressed her gratitude for the situation.
“I have never lived in a city where there is an exception to a posted sign,” she said.
Chief Hoffman also told the council, during his presentation at their Tuesday meeting, about a project created by Public Works engineers to use GIS – Geographic Information Systems – to give residents real-time information about the status of street sweeping.
The red-yellow-green website view is designed to tell anyone nearby if the sweeping on their street has not happened yet (red), is in progress (yellow) or complete (green).
The system will soon be tested in a pilot program, the chief said.
Redondo Beach has 37 street-sweeping routes, with two sweepers working full-time Monday-Friday. Chief Hoffman explained that the routes may slow down because of more debris on the roads, and when the sweeper pauses to wait for the code enforcement car to catch up, after issuing tickets – which only take an average of 46 seconds to create and deliver.
Hoffman counted 90-100 citations per day, a number that has been consistent year over year.
In 2019, the city began a contract with Athens Services for street sweeping. The company’s “misting system” leaves less water remnants on the street, thus parking officers are not always able to tell if a parked car was there before or not. ER
