The Isla Vista Community Services District has issued nearly 250 citations since its new parking compliance program went into full effect at the end of last month, district representatives confirmed to Noozhawk. 

Most of the citations were red curb parking violations, according to Jenna Norton, the district’s public works & sustainability director. 

Public compliance ambassadors are responsible for issuing citations.

Before the program was enacted, IVCSD gave out fake tickets with information about parking regulations to violating vehicles, warning car owners about the upcoming program launch.

Ambassadors first started issuing warnings on April 17 and actual citations on April 27, Norton said. 

“No one likes getting a citation, and we don’t like giving them,” Norton said. “We do not have a quota. We’re not making money on this program. We prefer to write zero tickets if we could.” 

Norton said the main goal of this program is to improve Isla Vista parking conditions.

“Now that people will start to get citations, and there’s money involved, (that’s) when it starts to get serious and the word actually starts to spread,” Norton said. 

After less than a week of citing, she said she has noticed some improvements when it came to red curb violations. 

The IVCSD’s fake tickets “did not change behavior,” she said, but “now that we’ve been citing, I definitely see a difference.” 

Most tickets will cost violators $37.50, per Norton.

That money will go back to the state and county courts. It will also cover processing costs and program operations, and will be used to pay back the program’s $300,000 start-up loan from the county, Norton said.

The program’s yearly operating cost is roughly $175,000.

Kaci Bardel, the IVCSD parking compliance project manager, is one of the two ambassadors responsible for ticketing cars.

Ambassadors aim to be patrolling around the community seven days a week, with varying schedules. Specific routes and times will change so that residents won’t be able to predict when ambassadors come around.

“From early morning to later at night, expect us to maybe be there, maybe not. It’s always going to be a little bit different,” Norton said.

She recounted instances where students asked if the parking laws they had violated were new. She explained to them that they were state laws — not created just for Isla Vista.

“Students are the ones that I’ve run into that issue the most with,” Bardel said.

But she said long-term residents have approached her and told her how satisfied they were with the program. She said residents told her they felt safer driving in the streets and many have reached out to them to report parking issues. 

“When it comes to long-term residents, they’ve been pretty happy with how things are going,” she said.

North said business owners have also offered the district positive feedback about the program.

She said business owners had been concerned about the turnover times for cars parked in time zones. Some vehicle owners leave their cars in a 15-minute zone for hours on end, leaving customers unable to park their cars to grab takeout or a quick coffee.

Chloe Rico-Dawson, a UC Santa Barbara student and Isla Vista resident, said last week that she hadn’t heard much about the program.

She doesn’t have a car in Isla Vista and is hesitant to bring one into the college community. 

“I don’t want to have to worry about parking. I know so many of my friends and my housemates who had to park down four blocks away and walk back 30 minutes to our house, just because they have a car here,” Rico-Dawson said. 

She said she wasn’t sure if the program was beneficial, given the cost.

“I think it could maybe partially help, but I don’t think they need that much money if they were going to do something like this. I feel like that’s very excessive,” Rico-Dawson said. 

Bardel said she has not faced any extreme reactions to her ticketing so far. She said there’s often more “annoyance” than anger, “especially during the warning period.”

“I realized that talking to them from my position as a community member tends to work better,” she said. 

Norton added: “We really tried to create ways to get people to proactively approach our ambassadors in a positive scenario.”

Isla Vista residents violating parking laws will face more warnings and citations in the following weeks as ambassadors make their way through the busy and crowded streets, Norton warned.

So far, ambassadors have reported seeing cars parked in the same spot for over 72 hours, as well as areas where cars are parked on sidewalks and in front of driveways, which leads to collisions and near misses due to low, poor sight lines. 

Norton said parking issues in Isla Vista are “a symptom of us being an underserved community.”

“It just shows that we haven’t had the resources to address the issue, which in turn has taken a huge toll on the health and safety of our residents and (their) ability to access public spaces,” she said.

“That is not a good way to live and does not promote a high quality of life.” 

For the record: The IVCSD’s warning period has wrapped up, and the program ambassadors are now issuing citations as of early May.