EDITORIAL: Lump of coal for employees

The city of Laguna Beach is giving downtown employees who live in the city a “lump of coal” or rotten potato for the holidays in the form of a stern warning that they’d better not use their “shoppers” parking permits while working, and they risk a $36 parking ticket if they do.

City Manager Ken Frank “” wearing a Scrooge hat “” vows to “swarm” the streets soon with meter readers seeking out employees using the parking permits that allow residents to park for free at meters while shopping.

How the meter readers will ferret out these errant employees is anyone’s guess: Are they going to follow folks walking out of a restaurant or shop to see exactly where they go and what they do? Apparently, yes.

What if an employee actually buys something downtown, not an uncommon occurrence during a day’s work. Does that exempt them from a ticket?

Will meter readers be demanding to see receipts from everyone pulling out of a parking space from now on?

What if you are returning an item instead of buying one?

The whole idea is Big Brotherish and certainly not in keeping with the holiday spirit.

The city has been struggling for years to allocate its scarce parking resources, which is made much more complicated by the fact that the summer parking requirements are so great, while fall, winter and spring bring far fewer visitors to the city.

A proposed 500- to 600-space parking structure at the Village Entrance is stuck in limbo, but more downtown spots have been created by the relocation of the city’s maintenance yard to the ACT V parking lot area at 1900 Laguna Canyon Road. However, these spots are little-used. That should tell the city something.

Meanwhile, employees of the shops and small businesses that the city loves are stuck, too. They can purchase costly “business” parking permits or a new parking permit for the former city employee lot at Forest Avenue and Laguna Canyon Road, which may or may not be of use to them, depending upon where they work.

When you think what most of these employees make for selling trinkets, T-shirts or restaurant fare, it’s no wonder that those who live in Laguna prefer to park for free in metered spots using their “shoppers” parking permits, which are inexpensive and allow a vehicle to remain in a spot for a three-hour stint.

So these employees have routinely moved their vehicles several times a day, a practice the city wants to stop.

Some on the City Council would like all employees to park at the ACT V lot and shuttle to work, but this is a very unwieldy and inconvenient arrangement unlikely to find many takers.

Until Laguna Beach comes to grips with the fact that it needs much more parking “” and convenient parking “” all the time, not just in the summer, this issue will continue to fester.