Parking tickets now $9.50 more expensive

The Costa Mesa City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to immediately increase parking citation fees by $9.50 to fund construction for courts and criminal justice facilities.

The added fees were mandated by State Senate Bills 1498 and 1407, both passed last year, and by Senate Bill 1732, passed in 2002. None of the added fine revenue goes to the city.

“Anyone who frequents courts knows that they are in dire need of construction and have very little funding,” said Councilwoman Katrina Foley.

The City Council’s only alternative to increasing the fees would have been to pay the state and county out of its own coffers, according to City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow.

The increased fines apply to parking violations including blocking street sweeping, overstaying in a 72-hour zone and failure to display placards for disabled parking spots, according to the council agenda report.

In other news, many vocal residents attended the meeting to protest a hotly contested proposal to renovate and expand Christ Lutheran Church & School.

Although it was only a small part of the proposal, most complaints focused on a single-family home adjacent to the church that the church is proposing to demolish and turn into fenced-off green space to meet city zoning requirements.

Taking heed of neighbors’ concerns that demolishing the house and annexing it onto the church property would diminish the neighborhood’s character and quality of life, the council voted unanimously to continue the issue to a later date and asked the church to look into possible solutions that wouldn’t require the house to be bulldozed.

Allowing a reprieve from open space requirements may be a better solution than making the church “tear down the neighborhood house by house,” said Councilman Eric Bever.

The council also encouraged the church to arrange a community meeting to get feedback from neighbors, as many neighbors accused the church of making little to no effort to include them in the process.

Tom Steinfeld, who spoke on behalf of the church, said that the church was willing to comply with the council’s suggestions.

Jerry Simpson, who appealed the matter after the Planning Commission unanimously approved the church’s plans, owns the house next to the one that the church proposed to demolish.

“My main goal was [to get the church] not to demolish this house, and hopefully that doesn’t happen,” Simpson said.

Commenting on the churches proposal, many residents cited concerns that the church’s back entrance created traffic problems and unsafe conditions when parents sped down the street to drop off children at the school.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.