P.B.'s Plague

At last week’s Pacific Beach Town Council meeting, Lou Cumming, member of the PB Town Council and sub-committee chair of their Safe & Beautiful Committee, addressed the crowd and spoke about his efforts in keeping oversized vehicles from overrunning PB “like the plague.”

Cumming has attended several city council meetings where he has taken the podium demanding that the council be more active in disallowing oversized vehicles from overnight street parking. Cumming asserts that the vehicles are safety hazards because they block corners and protrude from parking spaces, and they raise health issues because some RV owners dump wastewater onto streets.

A chart created by a community member showed the 25 oversized vehicles (including boats, motor homes, cargo trailers, and big box trucks) she saw during a one-hour stroll through southern PB.

District 2 city councilman Kevin Faulconer agreed that oversized vehicles were becoming a problem. According to a fiscal analysis by Faulconer’s office, implementation of an Oversized Vehicle Parking Ordinance would cost $831,418 (for installation of signage and creation of a public awareness campaign, setting up a permit issuance system, and enforcement of proposed regulations). Revenue estimated at $782,000 would be generated from permit processing fees and parking citation fees.

Cumming believed the cost analysis was high and utilized his financial industry background to conduct his own cost analysis of the proposed ordinance. He asked Faulconer in an email to reconsider several points in the analysis. He has not heard back from Faulconer and fears that “this matter languishes in limbo…that no one seems anxious to revive so as to bring it to a resolution and so improve our neighborhood street safety, cleanliness, and quality of life.”