Parking permit program is extended

FREMONT >> Maybe they’ll get the message this time around.

After hearing that police issued more than 4,300 tickets over three years to motorists who illegally parked on the streets near a main Mission Peak Regional Preserve trail head, the Fremont City Council unanimously extended a pilot permit requirement for the area another three years.

“The current program has helped alleviate traffic and noise in the residential area, while still allowing access to hikers who seek the challenge of climbing the popular peak,” Fremont Police

Department spokeswoman Geneva Bosques told the council Tuesday night.

The program was set to expire July 7.

Fremont police and East Bay Regional Park District community service officers issued the $63 citations from Nov. 13, 2016, to Oct. 19, 2019, according to a city staff report.

The council established the pilot program three years ago in response to complaints by Mission Peak residents about too many hikers and visitors parking on the curbs near their homes and sometimes blocking driveways

and leaving trash.

Permits are required on weekends and holidays for streets around the Stanford Avenue Staging Area, a main access to the preserve. They cost $3 per vehicle registered to each address, plus $4 apiece for a maximum of two guest vehicles.

“This is not a perfect program; it’s not a perfect solution to the problem,” Council member Vinnie Bacon said. “But I think it has provided some relief to the neighborhood.”

Preserve visitors can park in 150 spaces on Antelope Drive and Vineyard Avenue if the 43 spaces at the staging area entrance lot are filled up. They also can park at the Ohlone College parking lot.

Jameson Hsu, a Fremont resident for more than 30 years who joined the Zoom-conducted council meeting, praised the program.

“Before there was tons of people, lots of garbage,” Hsu said. “People were not being respectful of the neighbors at 5 a.m. in the morning. My wife is a pharmacist, an essential medical care worker at the time. Luckily, the permit is in place right now so she doesn’t have to deal with that noise over the weekend. That’s her only time to rest.”

The council did not discuss the city’s partnership with the East Bay Regional Park District, which paid the program’s initial cost for permits. The district’s

community service officers wrote about 66% of tickets during the first three years and Fremont police the rest, Bosques said.

Earlier this year, the park district informed the city it no longer would help fund or jointly enforce the permit area after July 7, though according to the staff report they are negotiating a monthby-month arrangement.

Fremont Police Chief Kim Petersen said her department doesn’t have the resources to enforce the program by itself.

“We know that approximately 25 to 30 cars are still parking in the permit area on any given weekend,” Bosques said of the Mission Peak neighborhood.

“With limited enforcement the actual violations are likely much higher.”

Over the next several months, the Police Department hopes to hire and train two parking compliance officers/technicians and a community service officer to issue tickets in the Mission Peak area as well as citywide so sworn officers can do their regular duties.

Kelly Abreu, a cofounder of park advocacy group Mission Peak Conservancy, questioned the prudence of hiring parking enforcement officers when the coronvirus pandemic is cratering city budgets, forcing many other cities to impose hiring freezes.

“This city can’t count on trillions of dollars of bailouts from Washington, D.C.,” Abreu said. “This city must prepare for the inevitable revenue shortfalls, not wait for the dam to break.”

But Petersen countered that, based on calculations using San Jose’s parking enforcement programs, she believes revenue collected from parking violations will cover the salaries of officers.

Mayor Lily Mei said she also is concerned about the city’s budget, “but looking at this as an investment, this is a critical need that we see with the changes of our demands within our community. It allows us to be better able to adapt.”