San Bruno to evaluate parking meter trouble

The city has aimed to address some of those considerations, offering visitors a 20-minute parking option for 75 cents beginning in June. 

At a meeting Aug. 27, Councilmember Tom Hamilton took further steps to address issues raised by merchants, asking staff to consider an additional 24-minute free parking green zone on the 400 block of San Mateo Avenue and a shorter-term parking option in adjacent city lots. 

Currently, parking in the downtown corridor is $1.50 per hour with a two-hour maximum from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Parking in adjacent lots is charged on a sliding scale — $1 for two hours, $2 for five hours, $3 for eight hours and $3.50 for 10 hours — from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.

“The rollout has not gone smoothly, and we had already agreed to come back and revisit the rollout after six months. We’re at five months, so I wanted to jump-start that process,” Hamilton said. 

The City Council unanimously agreed that further analysis on lot parking fees and an additional green zone should be added to an upcoming presentation on the paid parking program, which will likely occur at the end of October or beginning of November. 

Councilmember Marty Medina has attended four community meetings on the parking meter issue in five months, including one held Sept. 19, and said merchants and residents are also frustrated with the nonfunctionality of the meters themselves. 

“It’s very similar at each of the meetings, and I think although overall, more residents and businesses have said we understand the meters aren’t going away,” he said. “The problem is that the meters have varying levels of operability right now. There’s a number that aren’t working, so it is a concern of the residents and the merchants, basically, that these meters don’t work very well.” 

The program objectives laid out by the City Council — including increasing parking turnover, encouraging longer term parkers to move to lots and maintaining a 85% occupancy rate for street parking — are being met per preliminary data, Police Chief Ryan Johansen said at the City Council meeting Aug. 27. 

“The program is 100% succeeding in doing … exactly what you told us to do,” he said. 

He also suggested that propositions for increased free green zone parking and shorter term lot parking didn’t match up with citywide goals to create a paid parking program that would move long-term parkers into lots. 

“There’s already short-term parking all over San Mateo Avenue. Therefore, I would extrapolate the actual ask here is for free parking in different places in San Mateo Avenue. This is a discussion of cost, not a discussion of parking averages or parking time,” he said. 

Mayor Rico Medina said during the meeting that if the council’s goals for the program had changed, it would be best to delineate that to staff.  

“If we are going to change the objectives, I think we do need to tell the staff that and say, ‘OK, we told you here and it’s met, and now we want to change it,’” he said. “It’s hard once you change the goal posts.” 

Rebecca Molano, owner of One Love Cafe, has been actively advocating against the parking meters since the program began. Though she says the majority of merchants have accepted that paid parking is now a fact of life downtown, visitors getting $50 tickets when nearby kiosks are broken is unacceptable, Molano said. 

“The city does everything they can to make it harder … the lack of attention to this has left people really defeated,” she said. “The enforcement of the parking is way too aggressive. If meters aren’t working on a particular block, there should not be enforcement.” 

Though individuals can pay for the parking on their smartphones using QR codes, that shouldn’t be the only accessible mode of payment, Molano said. 

That’s a sentiment with which Marty Medina, as well as Councilmember Sandy Alvarez, who also attended the last community meeting on the issue, seem to agree. Alvarez said she would support ticket enforcement being paused around malfunctioning kiosks if it didn’t contradict the city’s contract, which she hasn’t read. 

“Suspending enforcement in areas where you know meters aren’t working — that seems like an obvious play,” Marty Medina said. 

For Kimberly Koury, owner of Hana Hawaiian Barbeque, the impacts of the metered parking continue to impact her business. She’s taken to walking food out to customers picking up to-go orders so they don’t have to pay the 75 cents, Koury said. 

“I don’t know what the leadership is looking for,” she said. “They want us to fail? They don’t want us to be successful?”