PACIFIC BEACH – Many residents strongly oppose the city’s plan to eliminate community parking districts like the one in Pacific Beach.
The City Council was recently set to act on a proposal to abolish community parking districts. However, Council President Joe LaCava announced a delay to give staff a chance to gather more information.
The city proposed eliminating the parking districts, taking the 2026 budget year allocation of $1.8 million back, and, in future years, keeping all the revenue collected in the districts.
Under the current policy, the proceeds are split between the city and the parking districts.
An informal “Shout Out” by Beach & Bay Press via social media and email surveying residents’ opinions revealed they take a dim view of the city’s proposal to eliminate community parking districts while leaving meters intact.
They strongly oppose diverting funds earned from parking meters away from communities.
Residents were also skeptical of the success of PB’s year-long pilot community parking program. Some argued it failed to improve the Garnet Avenue business district as intended. They claim it displaced residential parking by driving shoppers to park in neighborhoods to avoid meter charges.
In April 2025, a San Diego County Grand Jury report recommended the abolition of community parking districts due to issues with transparency, accountability and administrative costs.
In a recent Q&A with Beach & Bay Press, the city revealed it was moving forward with an action to rescind City Council Policy 100-18 and eliminate the parking district program, which requires council approval.
If approved, the $1.8 million budgeted for the districts in FY26 would be utilized by the city Transportation Department to implement infrastructure improvements within the community parking districts.
Should that come to pass, eligible work would include streetlight repair, street circuit replacement, pothole repairs, street resurfacing or repaving, traffic signal improvements, sidewalk repair and new traffic infrastructure, such as stop signs and crosswalks. The city added that its crews would also do the work, ensuring that community parking district funds would be spent more efficiently and on the highest-priority needs.
“These (parking district) funds are not intended for beautification (that’s what business improvement district funds are for),” according to the city. “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.”
The following are excerpts from what residents had to say about the prospect of PB’s community parking district being discontinued:
PB landscape architect Jim Neri characterized the proposal as a “bait and switch.”
Greg Knight of Mission Beach has avoided the PB parking area ever since they put in parking meters. “It is not just the money, but also the hassle of trying to remember if you have enough time on your meter,” he said. “We have not driven to any of the restaurants by parking meters and started finding restaurants in PB that have free parking. I can’t speak for the local businesses, but I can’t see the parking meters helping.”
“The PB parking meters were controversial from the outset, and in hindsight, we were admittedly naïve to believe they were part of a genuine pilot program,” said PB resident Chris Olson. “A central condition of their approval was that control would remain with the local community. Had we known then how political decisions would shift over time, I doubt the PB Parking District would have ever approved them.”
“I fought against these meters for years,” said John Cocozza of Crown Point, who was on the PB Parking District board before it was disbanded.
“I warned the community that the city would eventually try to take all the money. They rammed these meters in during the COVID lockdowns when residents could not come out to the meetings in mass to protest them. [The city] lied about the administrative costs and increased them at the last minute. Many of us in the community voiced our warnings that Pacific Beach would never see that money for infrastructure improvements.”
PB community activist Scott Chipman said PB’s Community Parking District was misguided. “Several well-meaning community members pushed the idea of a community parking district years ago, which was met with huge opposition,” he said. “Then, the issue was brought up again during the pandemic with the promise of physical and aesthetic improvements to our decaying business district.
“The plan moved forward as a one-year ‘trial,’ which came with no baseline data collection and no measure of success or failure, just the promise of hundreds of thousands of dollars to be used for much-needed improvements. There was also no real plan for how the money would be spent, another of several examples of deception and mismanagement failures by our city officials.”
“Please get rid of PB parking meters and replace them with 90-minute-to-2-hour parking spots like La Jolla Village,” said Dolores Nabavi of North Shore Highlands North.
“It has made it more difficult to patronize the smaller local businesses and restaurants that don’t have their own parking,” noted April Lassetter of Bird Rock.
“Keep the money in PB and use community members to oversee projects that benefit our beach town,” said Kathy Kelly of PB North Shore Highlands North. “I agree that the parking meters should go. I have bypassed quick runs into some shops that I used to visit frequently. Many people park around the corner or avoid going to the shops altogether because of the extra time-consuming hassle of dealing with the meters.”
Pacfic Beach Town Council president Charlie Nieto felt the city had “dropped the ball” in proposing to eliminate community parking districts.
“The continued habit of the city to make decisions without proper notice or community input further erodes public trust in our government,” he said. “What’s not reported enough is that the city consistently stopped sending representatives to meetings to share data and insight, readjusted funding criteria and deadlines with minimal notice, delayed and withheld funding disbursements, and added new barriers that prohibited operation of our Community Parking District.
“Our community is eager to collaborate with the city to calibrate an equitable distribution of public funds and we urge the city to negotiate in good faith to find a solution that works for everyone.”
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