Bah Humbug! Sacramento deserves a lump of coal for parking meter tickets at Christmas | Opinion
.JPG "A parking enforcement officer issues a warning for a car parked on 24th Street a few years ago.")
Merry Christmas, Sacramento. Here’s your parking ticket.
For the first time in 28 years, Sacramento started enforcing parking restrictions at parking meters in midtown and downtown on holidays. And the parking staff was apparently out in force on streets without meters, but with time limits, as well.
On a quick walk down 24th Street on an otherwise festive Christmas night, I noticed a car with a telltale white envelope on the windshield. It was a parking ticket, tucked lovingly under its wiper by a city parking enforcement officer.
What an absolutely rotten way for the city to collect a little extra money from unsuspecting residents.
Christmas in Sacramento’s urban core is deader than a door nail. Its restaurants and bars are mostly closed. It’s a moment for its residents to invite those from the suburbs and far away to celebrate in their homes. Meanwhile outside, seven city parking staffers were on patrol on Christmas (up from five in 2023), at least some of them in search of a vehicle that whose driver hasn’t fed the parking meter.
According to city spokesperson Gabby Miller, Sacramento issued 372 parking citations this Christmas, up from 253 last year. Of the citations issued, 81 were for “non-meter payment,” she said.
Officially, the enforcement of parking restrictions in Sacramento on Christmas is for the driver’s own good.
“Expanding metered parking and time restricted parking to include Sundays and legal holidays will help to regulate parking demand, promote turnover of parking spaces, alleviate congestion, and incentivize the adoption of alternative transportation methods,” according to the city staff report back on June 25. It was then that the city jettisoned its On-Holiday Street Parking Program, a respite from citations that had been on the books since 1996.
It was passed without debate by Councilmembers Caity Maple, Mai Vang, Rick Jennings, Karina Talamantes, Lisa Kaplan and Shoun Thao.
Ticketing vehicles on Christmas in a sleepy Sacramento downtown or midtown does not really regulate parking demand. It does not promote turnover of abundantly available parking spaces. It does not alleviate congestion that does not exist. And it does not incentivize a single Sacramentan to head to a gathering on Regional Transit, which is on its skeletal holiday schedule.
“Now we know this is a bunch of malarkey,” Steve Berousa, a Sacramento video producer, told the City Council on June 25. “You’re looking for ways to backfill the budget deficit. So why not be honest with the taxpayers?...It’s endless. The people in the suburbs, they can park for free out there.”
Beware, parking meters will be enforced on New Year’s Day. The other holidays where parking tickets will be handed out include Martin Luther King Jr. Day, George Washington’s Birthday, Cesar Chavez Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day (July 4th), Labor Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day.
The mastermind of this unnecessary gouging of city motorists is our own version of Ebenezer Scrooge, outgoing City Manager Howard Chan.
Earlier in June, Councilmember Katie Valenzuela asked for an investigation as to whether the City Council had violated the state’s open meetings law by debating a raise for the city manager in an open session. By multiple accounts, Chan attended the meeting and confronted every council member, asking them whether they would grant him a longer contract.
While Chan wanted more city money for himself, he had been busy closing an estimated $55 million budget gap for the coming fiscal year. And one of the ways to do it was to stick it more to Sacramento parking violators. By increasing the penalty of various violations and requiring the payment of parking meters on Sundays and holidays, Chan proposed to increase parking fee revenue from $14.5 million in 2023-24 to $17.2 million.
Sacramento parking enforcement officers write in the neighborhood of 12,000 parking citations a month, according to city statistics. That’s more than one ticket every four minutes, every hour of every day.
A Bee analysis of parking citation activity back in 2016 found that Saturdays are the most lucrative days for the city to issue citations. More than three times the tickets for parking at expired meters were issued on Saturdays, for example, than on Wednesdays. The temptation to expand the enforcement to Sundays was simply too great. But holidays? Is there no such thing as a holiday in Sacramento any longer?
Meanwhile, heading into this budget year, city officials estimated that the budget deficit facing them for the 2025-26 year could be as high as $77 million. The problem awaits a new city manager, given that Chan has decided to depart at the end of this year given how the City Council refused to grant him a longer contract.
Parking citations have become something akin to a tax for living or recreating in the city center. Extending enforcement to holidays is both a heartless move and proof of its true reason, which has nothing to do with maintaining order and promoting transit. Parking at an expired meter now costs $80 in Sacramento. That is up 60% since the last fiscal year.
There is a reason that the Sacramento City Council gave motorists a break while parking in downtown and midtown on holidays. It was the right thing to do. It was, as the word says, a holiday. Chasing after parking citation revenue on a quiet Christmas day is a sign that Sacramento has gone upside down.