Brea residents will soon see parking enforcements for street sweeping after mounting complaints from residents in recent years, with nearly 60% mentioning lack of enforcement.
Last week, city council members voted to reinstate parking restrictions on street sweeping, which will soon end a five-year period of no enforcement. Officials also questioned if overnight parking permits were impacting street sweeping services.
Mayor Christine Marick said she’s forgotten to move her family’s cars during street sweeping days due to inconsistent scheduling.
“When it isn’t every Monday or every Thursday and you’re not worried about getting a ticket frankly, there’s kind of no incentive to move your cars,” Marick said at the April 15 meeting.
Currently, the schedule is on select days in the first and third weeks of the month or second and fourth weeks of the month, depending on the location.
At last week’s meeting, council members voted 3-2 to resume enforcement. Councilmembers Marty Simonoff and Cecilia Hupp dissented.
According to a staff report, the enforcement could begin as soon as October 2024 to January 2025 depending on the hiring of the parking control officer.
When the officer is hired there would be a three-month grace period to issue warnings for cars parked on streets during street sweeping days, which would remain at two days a month.
The city received 100 official complaints from 2019 to April 2022 with 58 of the complaints mentioning enforcement, city staff found.
From 2022 until now there have been an additional 20 complaints that mention enforcement and cleanliness.
Michael Ho, public works director, said four areas regularly have cars blocking curbs, making it difficult to clean the streets regularly. He listed Country Hills Road near Kraemer Boulevard, Acacia Street near Brea Boulevard, Site Drive near Central Avenue and Madrona Avenue near Lambert Road.
Ho said city staff currently puts notices out for cars to be moved for street sweeping days in advance for places like Site Drive.
The public works department offers permits exempting residents from moving their vehicles for street sweeping.
But it’s different from the overnight street parking permit that is offered in a similar format.
The unpermitted overnight street parking ban began in May 2022 in the hopes that it would combat parking issues in places like parks or parking structures. and also to see if it would impact street sweeping issues.
At last week’s meeting, Brea Police Chief Adam Hawley said they have written “over 3,100 parking citations” for unpermitted overnight parking since the ban hit a couple years ago.
Community Development Director Jason Killebrew said there’s been an increase in overnight parking permits issued.
“Anecdotally, we think that’s adult persons still at home – there are people not going into the office, people working from home,” Killebrew said.
Killebrew said they typically only issue two per household but with more adults living in houses or having cars they’ve made exceptions.
“It’s not difficult to get one of these,” Ho said.
Simonoff asked Ho what the protocol would be if 20 overnight passes were issued in a problem area that was identified, like Site Drive and they wanted to street sweep.
“It would be a courtesy call to see if we could do a special sweep for that special area,” Ho said. “We would try to work with them very closely to clean the street.”
Another city is also looking to make changes to their street sweeping — Fullerton had it scheduled for the April 16 meeting, but it was pushed back to another date. City staff were given direction to explore alternative options, but recommended the current method which is once a week with citations given.
Gigi Gradillas is a Voice of OC intern. You can reach her at Gigi.Gradillas@gmail.com. Follow her on X @gigigradillas.
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