Concerns over lack of enough parking in downtown Ceres prompted Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez last week to suggest the possibility of having the city add an hourly limit to parking and issue fines for those who exceed a set time.
“I don’t know what that would cost for PD to enforce or if we’d have to make any ordinance changes, but I wanted to see what that possibility would look like,” said Martinez.
The consensus of the council is to have the item placed on a future agenda.
Councilman James Casey said he is not against posting a sign saying one hour parking, but said “enforcing is another issue.”
Downtown parking was significantly reduced in 2017 when the city rehabilitated Fourth Street with planters and a midblock crosswalk.
He suggested the problem is due to employees occupying much of the street parking stalls. He wondered if the business managers or owners could ask the employees to park in the city’s large parking lot a block north.
Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra said she frequents downtown and sees certain cars parked there “all day long and I’m like, I really want to eat there or I need to stop and pick up a prescription and I hear that a lot.”
She stated that she believed it was now illegal for police to mark tires in parking enforcement but it is generally permitted since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Verdun v. City of San Diego that tire chalking is a reasonable administrative practice and does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Chief Trenton Johnson said that a License Plate Reader that will be installed on the new Abandoned Vehicle Abatement (AVA) unit will have the ability to geo-locate any vehicle so that tires don’t have to be physically marked.
Councilwoman Cerina Otero said she’s in favor of exploring options, saying business owners have expressed to her the same complaints about lack of parking. But she also expressed concerns about the costs of monitoring parking enforcement and issue citations.
Mayor Javier Lopez suggested “motivating” visitors to downtown to use the spacious city parking lot and possibly limit the time a person may stay parked in a stall.
Casey wondered what would happen if somebody parked elsewhere to avoid a ticket. Chief Johnson, noting that he doesn’t believe the city has any limits on parking time, said the person wouldn’t be ticketed for relocating the car.
Brandy Meyer who has four businesses downtown that she’s associated with, said business owners did meet and came up with ideas. She said all of her employees park behind the buildings and that others could follow suit.
She also said that a two-hour limit is preferable to one hour because of eateries and to where an hour “wouldn’t be enough.”
“I would hate to see people getting tickets when they’re trying to do some business downtown,” said Meyer. “So I’m not against limiting the parking in downtown but I would like to see it two hours instead of one hour. And I would be opposed to any sort … any meters or payments.”
