In the summer of 2007, the Santa Barbara City Council decided to hike the fee for parking citations by $5, to $41, with an eye toward generating revenue for additional police bike patrols to combat gang activity.
Then, over the course of the ongoing fiscal year, a strange thing happened: Revenues from parking citations plummeted.
The city nonetheless beefed up the police bike patrols, particularly on the Westside. But its projected shortfall from those dreaded green envelopes has reached $350,000, or 13 percent shy of the $2.7 million expected this fiscal year, which is half over. That would be the largest parking-citation deficit in at least 20 years, according to city Finance Director Bob Peirson, who has worked at the city for that long.
Paradoxically, the number of citations issued by police has been on the rise since 2001, officials say. How can that be? City police and finance officials say it’s all about late fees — and how fewer people are having to pay them.
Officials say it is largely on account of a relatively new feature on the city’s Web site allowing people to pay their parking tickets online, which is helping them pay on time.
“This allows a quick and easy way to pay, before (the city) has had an opportunity to double or triple the late fees,” Deputy Police Chief Frank Mannix said. “Although I’m happy for the customers’ ability to pay promptly, it does have the effect of reducing our revenues.”
Also at play is deterrence: The higher the fee, the sharper the sting, the wiser the motorist.
Peirson pointed out that the fee for a parking ticket doubles to $82 if it isn’t paid on time.
“Eighty-two bucks is real money,” he said. “Back when the tickets were $25, people thought that was a lot of money, but it didn’t have the shock value of $82.”
Whatever the reason, the shortfall comes at a time of deepening financial gloom for the city, which is only beginning to feel the pain of the nationwide recession. All told, Santa Barbara is looking down the barrel of a $5.4 million deficit in 2008-09 — or about 5 percent of the general-fund budget. But the real pain is expected to set in this July — or the beginning of 2009-10 fiscal year — when the gap may widen to $8.3 million.
The biggest culprit for Santa Barbara’s impending financial downturn is sales taxes, followed by building permit and planning fees. It comes as little surprise, given the nationwide slump in retail sales, and the bursting of the real-estate bubble.
But the parking-citation deficit was less predictable, and its timing couldn’t be worse. Parking citations contribute significantly to the financial health of the police force. The revenue accounts for nearly 10 percent of the department’s $31 million operating budget.
Next fiscal year, the police department is among those that could face layoffs.
Although the newly added bike patrol officers were supposed to be funded by citation money that isn’t coming in, at least one city councilman said he wants to keep the budget knife away from them.
“Folks on the Westside have been thrilled and well served by that expansion,” City Councilman Das Williams said of the beefed-up bike patrol. “We’re going to have to tackle that issue — the fact that we don’t have all the money for it. But I will tell you it’s been very, very effective, from a gang-suppression standpoint.”
The police department isn’t the only city division that depends on parking tickets. The meter-maid-collected money also bankrolls the city’s $875,000-a-year street-sweeping program.
That, too, is experiencing a projected shortfall, albeit a less drastic one of $50,000, or about 5.5 percent below expectations.
The city’s regular parking citation program covers areas of restricted parking, such as the red-painted curbs downtown. Its street-sweeping citation revenue, on the other hand, comes from neighborhoods where street signs prohibit parking for several hours on certain days for the purpose of clearing the way for the street cleaners. Regular tickets cost $41; the street-sweeping tickets, $40.
Asked whether the citation shortfall means police will be more vigorous about nabbing speeders, Mannix said it doesn’t work that way.
“We’re much more interested in promoting traffic safety than generating revenue,” he said.
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