A study confirmed what the Los Olivos community already knows: The downtown area has a parking problem.

A meeting last week at St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church focused on the results of a parking study conducted by the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department and the next steps needed to provide more spaces in the commercial area while preserving the community’s unique character.

“I think everybody would agree, in this room and out there, there’s a problem, especially on the weekend, finding parking. But not everybody’s going to agree on how to move forward,” Gary Smart, a county traffic engineer, said during the Wednesday meeting. 

The study concentrated on the commercial area and found that parking utilization exceeded the industry standard of 85%. 

Parking utilization refers to the number of spaces and how often they are filled, with limited spots leading to frustration, congestion and a deterrence to visiting businesses. That also leads to vehicle parking overflowing into residential neighborhoods. 

“If you have more than 85% parking going on, you want to start looking at increasing your parking capacity,” Smart sad. 

Many businesses in the downtown area don’t have on-site parking, adding to the demand for on-street spaces.

Rather than hire a consultant, county Public Works staff conducted the survey using interns last summer. The assessment included driving through the area recording video to monitor the spaces on four different days to assess how often and how long spots are filled. 

Solving the parking predicament also requires considering other factors to avoid creating new problems.

“Parking is intertwined with encroachment, with pedestrian access, with bicycle flow and a lot of different things,” Smart said. “It’s very complicated. It’s not let’s just stripe this. There are a lot of impacts to it, like sight distances, turning movements and all that kind of stuff.”

Funding can be an obstacle to getting the improvements done, he added. 

Smart noted that similar efforts led to changes over time for parking in Old Town Orcutt and Summerland. 

Los Olivos falls within the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan, a blueprint for future development. However, the document remains mostly silent about Los Olivos parking matters. For other communities, the plan helps guides Public Works staff as they deal with issues such as parking shortages. 

“Public Works can put up signs and striping, but one person may want it and 20 people may not want it,” Smart said, adding that the current process will determine the community consensus for how to ease the parking shortage.

The Public Works staff doesn’t want to apply generic county standards like those used in larger communities. 

“The community plan says we want to keep our rural character,” Smart said. 

A study can help justify the need to proceed to the next step and even to seek grants, Smart added.

The study identifying the current problem will be followed by collecting community input through a survey, crafting a plan, designing the solution and implementing it.

“We really aren’t coming in with solutions to tell you what to do,” Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. 

She assembled a steering committee from some who attended the meeting to help craft survey questions to ensure that they cover various community concerns. 

“I think what you’ve heard is that we don’t want to come in and tell you want to do in your community,” Hartmann said.

Los Olivos community members who want to receive information on the parking effort can email Hartmann’s office at jhartmann@countyofsb.org.