The Last 'Cookie Jar:' $9 Million Beach Parking Fund

A funny thing happened at the City Council meeting last Tuesday night.

The city staff tried to derail the Ole Hanson Beach Park plan by omitting parking on the El Camino Real lots as one the uses for the money in the Beach Parking Fund. 

According to a city staff report, the $9 million dollar Beach Parking Fund could be used for parking at the:

Pier Bowl: $1.120,000
Channel: $140,000
Pico Lot (City Yard): $265,000
Marblehead Coastal: $6.825,000
Galleria: $2.940,000
Califia: $3.500,000

But NOT for parking on the El Camino Real lots at North Beach.

The proposed parking on the ECR lots was totally omitted from the report. It seems the city staff wants the idea of parking on the ECR lots to go away. This is the second example of the staff since the

The staff report totally ignores both Resolution 94-55 clearly says the reason for using eminent domain to acquire the property is “to accommodate storm drain improvements and public parking.”

The storm drains were built—the parking was not.

Ignoring this resolution, as the city staff and city council has done, makes no sense. This ostrich approach to existing city policies should not be tolerated. Just because the city staff does not like Resolution 94-55 is no reason to ignore it. The staff and council seem to suffer from selective amnesia when it comes to resolutions.

The staff report titled “Beach Parking Plans for the City of San Clemente” was buried in the consent calendar. This means it was considered to be “routine and will be enacted by one motion without discussion.” No discussion for an item that could determine much of the future of North Beach. Nice try city staff, but Ricardo Nicol from the public as well as Tim Brown and Bob Baker on the City Council had it removed from the consent calendar so it would be discussed.

(Editor's Note: The Tuesday beach parking agenda item was a discussion item--council did not decide to begin any projects or spend any of the Beach Parking money Tuesday.)

The case for parking on the ECR lots is clear. These lots would create new parking much closer to the beach than the remote parking areas of the Channel, Marblehead, and Pico lots that were in the report.

The report does not indicate who will be parking in these three remote parking lots.  The original idea for building these parking lots was for the convenience of the LAB’s Playa del Norte project that 58% of the voters rejected almost 4 months ago. So why is the city staff still contemplating building parking for a project that no longer exists? 

Why spend any part of the $9 million for parking that will not be used and ignore spending it for parking that will be used on the ECR lots? The lots in the staff report, Channel, Marblehead, and Pico are the proverbial “lots to nowhere” which is San Clemente’s version of the “bridge to nowhere” from Ketchikan to Gravini Island in Alaska.

I assert that it's legally questionable if the Pico lot and possibly the Marblehead lot could even be considered as “beach” parking. This is a big problem considering the fund is strictly limited to be used for beach parking.

With redevelopment agencies on the way out, the $9 million in the Beach Parking Fund is the last “cookie jar” that the city council can use for pet projects. Once this money is spent, it will be back to reality with expenditures that will have to come out of the general fund in the future.

After much council and staff discussion the ECR lots were added to table in the staff report. Tim Brown also had Cristianitos/Trestles added to the list, proposing that a possible lease could be worked out with the Marines for parking on Camp Pendleton-owned land. Bob Baker also added a plan by Mike Smith that envisions underground parking and a park on the .

A final addition came from Mayor Lori Donchak who wanted Poche Beach parking added to the list.

Baker unsuccessfully tried to have three of the original staff-generated proposals removed from the list. He would not support the $6.8 million dollar parking structure on the Marblehead site, the below-ground parking proposal for the sunken Galleria site, or the remote parking at the Pico Lot (City Yard) site more than ½ a mile from the beach. He also said that the Calafia lot proposal should be scuttled because the $3.5 million concept was illegal according to the City Attorney. 

(The proposal called for the city leasing the state-owned lot there, but that would likely be ruled an illegal use of beach parking money because it creates no additional parking.)

Mayor Lori Donchak tried to have the public workshop scheduled for September expanded to include parking at North Beach and other beach areas, but councilman Jim Evert insisted it only be about the Pier Bowl and his view prevailed.

What councilman Evert and the others failed to consider is that a park and more parking on the ECR lots at North Beach could attract enough visitors to that location to relieve some of the congestion at the Pier Bowl lots. This would negate the need to build a parking structure or spend more than $1.1 million to re-configure Pier Bowl parking to create 36 more parking places.

During the entire discussion, the City Council failed to consider Resolution 69-70 that called for a park in the triangle, and Resolution 94-55 that called for parking on the ECR lots.  Like the elephant in the room these resolutions were ignored.

Finally, on a 4-1 vote (Baker dissenting) an expanded list of nine beach parking areas is adopted.

Later in the meeting, the City Council took up the issue of the triangle at North Beach. After a great deal of confusion, obfuscation, and “word vapor,” they sent the issue

This is three months after the Council first sent it to GPAC to be discussed and the city staff failed to let the 21 citizen representatives on GPAC opine about the triangle. As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s déjà vu all over again.”