SAN DIEGO – The city’s projected $258 million budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2025-26 may claim another victim: community parking districts, including the one in Pacific Beach.
A San Diego County Grand Jury report in April 2025 recommended the abolition of community parking districts due to issues with transparency, accountability, and administrative costs. If approved by the San Diego City Council, the move will redirect approximately $1.8 million in parking meter revenue to city-managed infrastructure projects like sidewalk and streetlight repairs.
The plan aims to improve transparency in parking revenue use and align with broader parking reform efforts.
With the news that community parking districts, including the one in PB, are to be disbanded and their governing boards dissolved, Times of San Diego reached out for a Q&A with Craig Gustafson, the city’s deputy director of business operations, to get more information about the rationale behind this latest move.
TOSD: Now that parking districts will be gone, what does this mean for parking meters already there in those districts?
CITY: Parking meters will remain. We’re moving forward with an action to rescind City Council Policy 100-18 and eliminate the community parking district program going forward. This will require City Council approval and will be docketed for consideration soon. If approved, the $1.8 million budgeted for community parking districts in FY26 will then be utilized by the Transportation Department to implement infrastructure improvements within the community parking districts.
Eligible work includes streetlight repair, street circuit replacement, pothole repairs, street resurfacing or repaving, traffic signal improvements, sidewalk repair, and new traffic infrastructure (stop signs, crosswalks, etc.).
Having city crews do the work will ensure that the funds are spent more efficiently and on the highest-priority needs among eligible projects.
TOSD: What about the funds collected, a portion of which was to go toward local community improvement and beautification? Is that now going into the city’s general fund?
CITY: These funds are not intended for beautification (that’s what business improvement district funds are for); they’re exclusively intended for parking and mobility-related improvements and maintenance. The funds will remain in the communities where they are collected and will be expended on eligible expenses, such as streetlights, sidewalk repairs, parking additions, and upgrades.
TOSD: Why was this decision made? What will be its consequences?
CITY: The decision is a result of multiple reviews of how the CPDs operate and spend funds. In March, the San Diego Mobility Board sent a letter to Councilmember Stephen Whitburn and other members of the ATI Committee, citing a lack of accountability for CPDs and conflicts of interest.
In April, the San Diego County Grand Jury released a report calling on the city to disband CPDs, noting the CPDs do not meet the transparency requirements of their agreements with the city and “spend a significant percentage of allotted revenues on administrative costs and create unnecessary layers of bureaucracy,” among other findings. The city then initiated an internal review in May that found the CPDs had poor management practices.
Many violated their contracts (no competitive bidding process, conflicts of interest, not charging reasonable fees, and couldn’t provide invoices that detailed work completed). All of that information made it clear that the CPD program is not operating as intended, and the city could better utilize the funding to make infrastructure improvements more quickly and efficiently.
The upshot is that residents will begin to see immediate improvements in the form of streetlight repairs, as well as other infrastructure improvements like sidewalk repairs, over the next several months.
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