Your parking ticket costs a little more money today than it did in 2006, but city officials say the citation cost increase alone does not account for a spike in revenue from parking citations that has increased almost 58 percent over the past five years.
The revenue Manhattan Beach has received from parking citations has risen from $1.57 million in 2006 to $2.48 million in 2011. City revenue manager Steve Charelian said that it is difficult to determine the reason for the increase.
“I’m looking at funds for the last three years’ budget [which is] pretty consistent,” Charelian said. “I don’t know where the increase is coming from.”
Parking citations in Manhattan Beach have increased from $30 to $48 since 2006, Charelian said, with a steady increase dating back to 2002, when expired parking meter citations were raised from $26 to $30, and other citations were raised from $30 to $35. In 2008, meter and other parking citations were all raised to $40.
“It’s been very gradual,” Charelian said. “It’s not a jump.”
Charelian said that the cost of a citation has remained pretty standard compared to other cities, and that $12.50 from every citation goes to the state and county.
Bruce Moe, director of finance for Manhattan Beach, said that one of the reasons for the increase in revenue could be because in recent years people have been paying their citation fines more promptly.
“Part of it is really economical,” Charelian said. “The past four years it’s been really difficult to collect. In bad economic times—we’re still going through it, I think—we’re seeing more people paying quicker than we did four years ago.”
There has also been an increase in parking to accommodate the Metlox shopping and dining center downtown. Charelian said that more meters and more guests tend to raise the likelihood of an increase in citations.
“The daytime population increases in summertime,” he said. “That would go hand-in-hand with more meters being expired.”
Expired parking meters and street sweeping citations are the most common reasons for parking citations, making up 70 percent of parking citations issued, Charelian said. He said that the city has consistently written about 70,000 citations every year for the past three years.
Moe said that city council has directed $4 of all citations—except for meter expiration cites—toward a capital improvement fund. Charelian added that with the majority of citations (about 70 percent) in the city coming from expired parking meters, that fund has not gained much of the extra parking revenue in spite of the increase.
Moe said that the city would someday like to have more high-tech meters in town, with solar-powered meters for all outdoor parking.
“We haven’t planned for any of that technology at this point,” Moe said. “We’re just glad to have meters that accept credit cards.”
But new meters or not, Charelian said that only accountability can help prevent most parking citations.
“There’s got to be a sense of ownership as well from the individual receiving the ticket,” he said.
He said that there’s logic behind the citations, despite people’s frustrations about having to pay when their meters expire.
“[Without citations], if that was the case, we’d have a whole bunch of people wanting to stay at the meter a long time or over the limit,” he said. ER
