City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, welcome. Welcome to our July 7th, 2026 regular city council regular meeting. And we will start off with the pledge to the flag. We have an esteemed guest here, Congressman Lee. Would you mind coming up and getting us started through the Pledge of Allegiance?

Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much.

We'll be calling you back up shortly.

get the elementary school principal out.

Yes. And could we please have the roll call?

Council Member Sherrillian?

Here.

Council Member Holward? Present. Council Member Lesser?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Tarnay? Here. Mayor Franklin?

Here. and I would like to take a moment here to honor all active duty military and veterans in the office or in the audience. Whether you are a National Guard, a reservist, or on active duty, please stand and be recognized or wave your hand. Thank you so much. Thank you for your service. And we're going to ask Congressman Liu to come back up again and also his assistants, Deputy Chief Nicholas, Nikolai, and Mia, his field representative. And I'll just turn it over to you again.

Well, good evening. And let me first thank Mayor Franklin and Mayor Pro Tem Tarnay and Council Members Lesser, Haworth, and Sherrillian for your excellent stewardship of Manhattan Beach. This city is one of the crown jewels of California. It is an amazing city. and you all have done a great job running it. And I'm so honored that I was able to fight for and secure a grant of over a million dollars to help improve Manhattan Beach's cybersecurity. And every city needs to improve their cybersecurity. I'm a recovering computer science major, so I understand. uh how easy things can get hacked and you may have seen with recent news articles about anthropic which is a ai company they created mythos 5 their most advanced model and it was so advanced that the administration essentially shut it down for a few weeks while they could put in guard rails and i was talking to a bank executive at a major bank who said that they hire all these very smart people to try to find cyber security flaws in their own systems and if they could find one or two a year they get promoted. Well they use mythos five on their own systems and they discovered 3,400 flaws. So that is a scale we're dealing with and that's why this money is urgently needed to help upgrade cyber security at Manhattan Beach and hopefully you all will put it to good use.

That's wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Why don't we all come together? Oh, yes, if you wouldn't mind. So, of course, we want to give you a City of Manhattan Beach pin, but also our commemorative America 250 pin as well. which I'm sure you'll treasure, and for Theo and Mia. Is the finance director here ready to put this in the bank? I think we'll validate your parking too.

And our next ceremonial is Orhan Tanner here.

I can talk a little bit about it. Is the poster here anywhere?

It's outside.

Oh, it's outside. Oh, there we go. Can I just borrow that? Oh, okay. Well, we got it right up there.

It takes a village. There we go.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much again.

Appreciate it.

Take care. Bye-bye. If he were here, we would have Oron Tanner here, who we put out a call to design a special poster relative to the America 250 celebration in Manhattan Beach for all types of people. And I don't know, how many participants did we have? How many submissions did we have, Mr. Lehman? Do you know how many submissions we had? Okay, we had five submissions, and the jury picked Oron Tanners right here. So we want to commend him. We'll get him his pins and everything like that, and we appreciate him taking the time at the... salute the troops in America 250 concerts in the park this Sunday. He actually was in the gazebo signing copies, and his hand was pretty sore by the end of it, so he had a lot of business there. So I want to thank the staff, too, the city staff. That was a remarkable and amazing event, made special by the presentation of the poster, the satin dolls, the sons of the American Revolution, the daughters of the American Revolution, and the Boy Scouts, and a flyover, and chicken soup. I don't know. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on. So thank you all sincerely very much. They worked very hard that day, and not just that day, to put it all together. So a round of applause for Oron, and we'll get to it. And then we can be seated.

No picture?

Oh, around the America 250?

We'll wait for one.

Okay.

Okay, the next ceremonial is a presentation honoring the life and legacy of Chad Jenkins for his dedicated service to our nation. and the United States Marine Corps and the Marine Forces Special Operations Command. And what I'm going to read was written by my son, Jimmy, who played football with him for many years at MiraCosta. And then soon after Chad joined the Marine Corps, Jimmy joined the Marine Corps. They were posted on the same base for a little bit of time in the life, but I asked him to help me with this, and so he wrote this. So this is the words of James Franklin, retired Sergeant Marine Corps. Chad Elliott Johnson, or as some know him, Chatters, and others know him as Sergeant Chad Jensen, attended MiraCosta High School, joining the football team as a freshman. On the varsity football team as a junior, he helped bring the Mustangs to the CIF finals. As a senior, he played as the starting center to help bring the team to the CIF finals again, only this time being an instrumental part of bringing home the 2009 CIF championship for the Mustangs. After high school, he entered the Marine Corps. He tried out and passed the strenuous and highly selective testing and screening for Marine Special Operations Command, also known as MARSOC, the elite of the elite. MARSOC trains the US Navy SEALs. He was promoted to sergeant. The latter part of his career took him to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he served as a critical skills operator within MARSOC, stationed with the 2nd Raider Battalion. Sadly, his life was cut short at the age of 25 on July 10th, 2017, aboard a KC-130 troop transport plane that crashed on its way to Arizona for pre-deployment training. Chad lived the Mustang's motto of step up. Having stepped up in the CIF finals, stepping up to answer a call greater than himself by enlisting in the Marines during a time of war, and by stepping up even further by becoming a MARSOC critical skills operator within the Special Operations Command community. Chad is currently at rest at the Miramar National Cemetery. Our thoughts as a nation this week are focused on the American ideal of freedom, 250 years of freedom. We often hear that our freedom is not free. It is achieved by the sacrifice of many good people who go so far as to lay down their lives for others to achieve it. We are humbled in gratitude and in deep appreciation to Chad and others in service to our country. The Marine motto is never above you, never below you, always beside you. Semper Fidelis, Sergeant Chad Elliott Jensen. Thank you. We can applaud. Chad would like that. Thank you very much. Okay, so we move on to item E, the approval of the agenda and waiver of full reading of ordinances. We have a motion by Councilperson Howarth and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Nina Darnay. Call for the vote.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, we move on to item F, which is city council and community organization announcements of upcoming events. We have the library versus waste management, always the first one.

Hello, Cassandra Sargent with the Manhattan Beach Library. Sorry. So we figured what better time to start thinking about college applications in the middle of summer. So next Wednesday, July 15th at 5.30, we're gonna be discussing different writing prompts you can expect for the common application and personal insight questions. But you'll also receive tips on how to stand out on your college application. In addition, summer discovery program's in full swing. It still runs for another month and it only takes six books or activities to earn you prizes. So you can all ages sign up today. It's really great to do with your parent, like the parents and the kids can read together, earn prizes together, and it'll have a lot of fun. And you'll get entered into the countywide weekly prizes that you can give out. Somebody from our library already won one this week. So yeah, thank you.

Great, thank you so much Cassandra.

Humble Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council Members, City Officials, Public Works, Bobby Bell, WM Outreach and Educator for Recycling Organics. Just wanted to remind everybody this coming Saturday, our consultant Lisa Ryder will be holding her backyard composting class at the beautiful Manhattan Beach Botanical Gardens held up in the west side of the Polly Wogg Park. The class starts at 10. It's one of those things you want to get there at 10 if you're planning on attending, so you know she goes in order of the steps of all doing it. She'll also go on our curbside organics. That's all I got. Wishing you guys all God's blessings.

Good evening. Kelly Stroman, Executive Director for the Downtown Business Association.

Oh, look at that.

Wow.

I have a twin brother.

Farmer Franklin. Now that I have your attention. The 20th anniversary of the Manhattan Beach Farmers Market is coming up in two weeks. And so two weeks from now we'll be here and the festivities will have passed. So I'm announcing it today. We welcome Mayor Farmer Franklin to come out and all of you You'll be hearing from me individually with picture time, everything with all the city staff and all the vendors, but it's a really big celebration. We have seven different vendors who have been there for all 20 years, which is remarkable. We obviously are officially in our new location, but it's really been an incubator for so many small businesses, so many non-profit groups that have exhibited at the farmer's market and just really bringing the community together in so many different ways. July 21st, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. are always the market hours, but that Tuesday is our 20th anniversary. We want to see you and the community out enjoying, and we're going to have a bunch of special activities. Thank you. That's great.

Thank you for removing the blacked-out tooth. I knew you were going to do that.

Good evening, honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the city council. I'm Adam Finestone, planning manager here. I wanted to just remind the public and the council about the upcoming community open house for preview of conceptual designs related to the project pulse work effort we've been undergoing. This is going to be the final opportunity for the public to attend and provide input on conceptual design prior to design options being presented to council for future construction or at least for direction on that. The design open house, the conceptual design preview will be on Wednesday, July 15th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Jocelyn Center. We encourage everyone to attend. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else for public announcement? I wanted to, we didn't prepare for this, but just I want to review the coffee with the mayor. I don't know if you have that handy. I've been looking for it here. You'd think I would know.

Oh, there we go.

All right. So Thursday, July 9th at Coffee Bean on Thursday, at the Village Mall at 9 a.m., and then at Verve Coffee at Metlops on Thursday, July 16th at 9 a.m. So hopefully we can sit down and discuss what's going on, answer some questions for you. Thank you. Okay, any more questions? How about online? Any more announcements? How about online?

No requests on Zoom. Okay. Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to say once again, huge kudos to staff, our first responders, our comms team, everybody who has been working so hard around the clock and behind the scenes on the FIFA World Cup. Our city has had different teams stay at our hotels, and that has required road closures and all kinds of public safety implementations that have just gone off without a hitch. And that takes months of planning, not to mention the joy that I've witnessed in downtown Manhattan Beach with Folks, I know folks who have been at the matches and are wearing their jerseys or folks who are just coming downtown to watch the matches together. And what I think it really shows, you know, obviously I'm a soccer fan, whatever. Maybe you aren't, and that's okay. But I have really witnessed community building through the shared experience of watching these matches together, whether it's at Shellback or Shade Hotel or together in your living rooms. It's been a really cool thing to watch. But we're all about community building here. But really, just kudos to our staff because the amount of work you all put in is really appreciated and noticed. It's still our last match in L.A. is on Friday. There's still more World Cup to go, but I'm glad it's slowing down a little bit because I thought my head was going to turn into a soccer ball. The verdict is still out.

Okay, wonderful. Any more colleagues? No? I just want to add to that, everybody that I spoke to, you know, you can tell when people are, you know, are visitors and everything because, you know, they're looking at the ocean and they just can't believe it and everything. And all of them just paid us just very high compliments on that. you know, the, you know, how gorgeous the city was. What a great job we did. We cleaned beaches and the like, and they just thoroughly enjoyed everything. So thanks everybody. Appreciate it.

Yes, please. I know I wanted to add to that, not just because of FIFA, but, you know, we just celebrated our 250th anniversary of, being independent, and I think public safety did such a great job with just 4th of July. You heard some other beach cities having some issues further south. So thank you for what you do, not just for special events like FIFA, but just recurring annual events and every day. Specifically, it was 2,000 people, I think, doing the Ironman. It was the most in Hermosa Beach, which is very close to our border because they do swim north. But thank you for what you're doing, keeping us safe. Appreciate that.

Oh, I just have one comment. Sorry, Rob.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I just wanted to point out that we have the U.S. Constitution in the front for our residents. I'm so excited. It's a pocket size. And there's some fun facts in there, so... Don't forget, part of the celebration is also knowing our Constitution and pick it up, be refreshed. And Steph's done a tremendous job with all the commemorative pins and the poster contest. So it's a fun part of kind of remembering what our duties are as U.S. citizens. So thank you.

And we'll move on to public comments. So this is limited to three minutes per person. And remember, if you speak on an agenda item here, you are not able to speak on that agenda item when it comes up.

Hello, council members. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I'm told when you're trying to get something done, the best way to do it in a speech or talk is to tell them what you're going to tell them and then tell them the details about that. And then when you're done, tell them again what needs to be done. So what needs to be done is action by our council for our city. Part of the reason is from an article that I read recently. Let me read that please to you. The debate centers around California's housing laws, including Senate Bills 9 and 1123, which permit developers to build up to 10 housing units as high as three stories on a single residential lot. Residents feared that increased density could strain local infrastructure and permanently alter the character of Altadena. This was the fire victims. According to a New York Post, one resident stated, we are a single family residential community who lost everything and now we're losing our community. Losing our community is the concern. The meeting also focused on Senate Bill 1090, introduced by State Senator Sasha Renee Perez, which aims to create a five-year moratorium on the state density law designated in the Altadena area. This seeks to protect fire damage from the outside corporations and real estate speculators. ABC 7 News reported that Los Angeles County Supervisor has joined efforts to exempt Altadena from these laws from the state, emphasizing the need to preserve the community's character. Wow. They are taking action to preserve the community's character. We have had conversations, council members have come to us and mentioned what charter cities can do, what the general cities can do, why we can't do this and why California's taken control of our local activities and laws and codes. They have the state senator have a bill to have a five year moratorium to protect community's character. Come to my conclusion, third part, what I want done. I beseech you, I request you, I demand you, I want you to go get in touch with their senators, state senators, whatever our state senators can do. Hey, we are losing our community's character with the ADU thing, with the construction. We have signs in the city that say stop the rise. We need action. They have a bill that's stopping it, a five-year moratorium. We would love a five-year moratorium, if not a permanent moratorium. I beseech you to take action for us, for our community's character, please. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm not sure if I said my name is John Chikowsky.

Thank you, sir.

And I love Manhattan Beach.

Anybody else in chambers? For public comments, have that online.

No requests on Zoom.

Okay, so we will close public comments. We go to item H, which is the consent calendar. It's been approved. No items were pulled. So we move to...

We need to move and approve the consent calendar. We didn't move approval on that.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought we had a vote already. Okay. So, motion to accept. Councilwoman Hoerth?

It's a motion to approve.

Motion to approve, yes. Councilmember Hoerth and seconded by Councilmember Lesser. You have the vote, please.

Motion passes 5-0.

Moving on to item I, items removed from the consent calendar. There were none. So we go to item J, which is public hearings. And we have item number 11, consideration of a public hearing for consideration of several items here. And we have community development director Akiri. Akiri.

Good evening, Mayor Franklin, members of the City Council. Thank you. Yes, Moss and I didn't practice the opening before, but I think I'll open it up and just say a few words, if I may. So with the recent discussions over the last year about the parking strategies study that was done, as well as discussions during our budget process, we were asked to bring this item back to consider smaller incremental rate increases for parking meter rates as well as parking citations. And then I also wanted to remind everyone that parking has been one of the number one priorities in our recent community surveys as well. So our goals with the enhanced revenues that would come from these increases would be to fund additional improvements and infrastructure related to parking to address some of those concerns in the community. With that, I will be turning it over to Emmy Rose Hanna, our Financial Services Manager, for a brief presentation.

Thank you, Libby, for the introduction. Again, my name is Emmy Rose Hanna, Financial Services Manager with the City's Finance Department. Good evening, Mayor Franklin and members of City Council. And tonight we'll be conducting a public hearing to consider two main topics, which is first the variable parking meter rates, which are based on the adopted parking management strategies. In addition, secondly, we'll be discussing an increase to the parking citation penalties. And at a certain point in the presentation, I will transition to Eric Zanvleet as he led the effort on the overall city parking management study and he'll discuss some of the key concepts of the variable parking rate structure that was developed through that study. And as part of the proposed variable parking rates, there are two coastal development permits included in the public hearing which cover the appealable and the non-appealable zones within the coastal area. And so just to provide a brief overview of tonight's presentation, we'll share some background on the city's parking meter rates in addition to the parking citations. From there, we'll outline some of the immediate and also long-term parking infrastructure needs. We'll also present a survey of surrounding city and similar agency survey for parking rates in addition to the parking citations. From there, we'll transition the presentation to Eric as he'll discuss the proposed variable rates that were recommended by the Walker consultants who developed the parking management study. And then we'll dive into the proposed parking citation penalties that were developed, and then we'll share the fiscal impacts of adopting both adjustments to parking meter rates and citations. And lastly, we'll have the recommendation. I also wanted to share that as part of our outreach, we have communicated these proposed changes to the north and downtown associations in addition to the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce earlier back in June before we posted the PPIC materials that discussed the parking rates. And we also placed an ad in the Beach Reporter on June 25th, 2026 as part of our requirements for this public hearing. So before we dive into the presentation, we wanted to focus first on the parking meter rates. So we kind of split up the presentation in two phases. And towards the end, we'll have an opportunity to talk about the parking citations. So for our first topic, for parking meter rates, we wanted to share a little bit of background and timeline that has led us to today's presentation on the parking meter rates. So as a best practice for financial management of our city's parking systems, the parking rates are re-evaluated periodically to ensure that the rate revenue generated from the parking enterprises are sufficient and can support the cost of rising operations in addition to replacement of aging parking infrastructure. So in the last few years, the parking rates were updated. Most recently in 2025, the rates were set to 250 per hour for the on-street and the city-owned lots, and then set to 350 per hour for the beach lots, which covers the upper and lower pier lots, in addition to Bruce's Beach and El Porto, which are part of the county's owned lots. And then four years prior to that, the rates were adjusted in 2021, where the rates were set to $2.50 an hour in the beach lots. And in 2020, the rates were set to $2 an hour for the on-street meters and city-owned lots. Okay. So fast forward to more recent events. On September 25th of 2025, the PPIC recommended approving the parking management strategies and toolkit that was developed through the Walker Consultants. And part of that, the study and the strategies developed through the study included the variable parking meter rates. then on november 3rd 2025 council approved the parking management strategies and toolkit and later this year april 2026 council approved the final adopted version of the city-wide management parking management study and provided direction to implement the strategies in phases, so not all at once. As you recall, there were 22 individual strategies that were developed through the study, and the goal was to not tackle all of them at one time, that it would come back to council in phases. So one by one, the strategies are returning to city council for adoption. as is reflected with the recent implementation of the microtransit shuttle system through circuit. So that was identified as a strategy and that has since been implemented with the WaveRider. Fast forward to June of this year, the parking meter rates were discussed again during our fiscal year 27 budget presentation. And at that meeting, the parking rates were identified as a critical revenue enhancement need for our various parking funds. And at that meeting, council provided direction to continue with the variable parking meter rates and come back with the proposed structure. And most recently on June 25th, we presented to PPIC the proposed rates and they ultimately recommended the approval of the rates for the variable parking meters throughout the city. And that brings us to today's presentation to consider those variable parking meter rates that were developed through the parking management study and really have been in the works since September of last year. So the information being presented is not new necessarily, it's a culmination of all of the events and studies that have occurred prior. And so with that, we see that more than ever before, the city's seen an increase in parking infrastructure needs. As Libby mentioned earlier, addressing parking issues is the number one priority we're seeing in a lot of the community polling, in addition to the budget survey that was conducted in February of this year. So it continues to be top of the list. And we felt it was important to highlight some of the specific needs as they'll continue to impact the city's current and future ability to fund parking programs. So as seen on the previous slide, we've had to reevaluate the parking rates on a more frequent basis to better align the rate revenue with the critical parking needs. And some of these needs include increased demand for parking, includes the unexpected lot three replacement parking lot, also includes aging parking infrastructure. So we have addressed lot three in the sudden closure of that and the interim lot, however, We also have lots two and lots four, which have the same estimated useful life as lot three. And so currently in our CIP budget through the parking fund, there's about 500,000 that's budgeted to address a structural conditions assessment for both of those parking lots. And that's earmarked for fiscal year 28. That addresses just the structural assessment. It does not address the actual construction or infrastructure costs that we would realize in the future. So with that, we have unanticipated capital costs. And also included in the CIP budget, the parking fund includes waterproofing parking structures, painting of Metlock's parking structure. And we have a $3.6 million project for the parking payment facilities program, which converts all of the single space meters throughout the city into parking kiosks, pay stations. And so those are just some of the funded capital projects and assessments that are in the budget. But we continue to see rising operational costs to maintain the parking systems. And other parking lot improvement projects as aging infrastructure reaches its maximum useful life. And so we touched a little bit about Lot 3 in the previous slide, and that was mainly associated with the unexpected demolition and the interim lot, the flat lot that is now there. However, long-term, Lot 3 will transform based on the outcome of Project Pulse. And that project will combine the redevelopment of both 400 MBB and Lot 3. And so through project polls, we do anticipate that those projects would result in some critical replacement within the downtown area. And so for some added context, we wanted to explore what potential financing costs the city could incur or debt service payments that we could expect for a large scale parking lot project of that sort. So we added a hypothetical scenario. to where if all 145 parking spaces that were formerly on lot three were redeveloped into a new parking structure, we estimate the construction costs for that scale of a project to be in the 10.2 to 21 million dollar range. And you'll see that's a very large range. And the reason it's that range is because the construction costs per parking space will vary widely depending on whether it's an above ground parking structure or a below ground, a subterranean parking structure. So average parking per space. for construction above ground is 70,000 and for below ground it's about 145,000. So using those estimates and applying that upon the 145 parking spaces, that ends up with the 10.2 to 21 million in estimated construction costs. And those are just construction hard costs. They don't include the soft costs that would include the design the engineering, the construction management. So those are purely construction-based costs. And those estimates were derived from a 2023 Lot 3 feasibility study. So those estimates are about three years old at this point. And I believe there's another Lot 3 feasibility study in the works that will be presented to Council in a few months. And so based on those potential construction costs, the parking funds do not have sufficient capital to pay for it all up front. And so that would require the city bond go out for certificates of participation. And that would mean the city could expect annual debt service payments in the range of 600,000 to 1.4 million per year. for the parking fund to absorb. And those would be net new costs that the parking fund would have to absorb. And I share this again because the city currently does not have sufficient fund balance in our parking fund to pay for those projects up front. It would have to be bonded over a 30-year period, very similar to Metlox, actually. The city is still repaying the Metlox structure, and that's currently on the books for repayment through 2032 is when that is paid off. And another component to debt financing is when the city goes out to issue a certificate of participation, investors like to see that the city has sufficient rate revenue in the parking funds and that the city would meet debt service coverage ratio minimum requirements, which is a measure of assessing the fund's capacity to pay for long-term debt. So in anticipation of Project Pulse, and the future debt financing that the city would anticipate. It's critical that the city evaluate parking rate revenue for both the current and the long-term future obligations. So moving on to the survey on the parking meter rates, to better understand how we compare with surrounding and like agencies, we surveyed the hourly parking meter rates in eight other cities. So the survey results that you see here, they rank from highest to lowest. And because each city has variable parking meter rates, we list both the lowest hourly rate of that city and the highest hourly rate of that city. And so the ranking one to nine is based on the highest hourly rate per city. And you'll see that a lot of cities have higher hourly rates, and those are in the higher demand locations within those cities. As you could see, Newport Beach and Long Beach and Beverly Hills are in the $6, $8 range. So those would be in those prime parking areas. lot locations and the prime seasons. So I will add that we adjusted the rates last spring, 2025. However, despite raising the parking meter rates, the city's parking meter hourly rates rank second lowest. So we're about eight on the bottom of the survey compared to the other cities. And then since last year, we did present the survey material last year, but we wanted to share some of the changes since then. And we did see that two cities have adjusted their hourly parking meter rates, and those would be City of Hermosa Beach and Newport Beach. And we are seeing that more cities are considering increasing their parking rates. We recently discovered that Redondo Beach is part of their budget adoption package. They too were considering parking meter rates and their council directed staff to come back with adjustments to parking meters. And so as illustrated on the survey results, most cities have adopted rates that vary by lot location, but also they include a seasonal component where they assess a higher rate in the peak seasons, lower rate in the off-peak seasons. And even one city has a built-in annual adjustment to ensure that their parking rates keep pace with the operations and costs. And so you'll see that is reflected with the city of Newport Beach. So moving on, I'd like to transition the presentation over to Eric Zandvliet, and he'll be able to speak to the parking management strategies and really the purpose of a variable parking meter rate structure. So thank you.

Thank you, Emmy. I'm Eric Zandvliet, your city's traffic engineer. I'd like to be here to explain a little bit about what variable parking rates are. Variable parking rates can be different parking rates depending on location or by time. We're proposing a variable parking rate for locations throughout the city, as well as seasonal. We're not proposing a variable rate based off the time of day. That was one of the strategies. This is one of the strategies that the city council agreed to move forward with. It was also mentioned as part of the budget hearing as well. What the variable parking rates do is it helps change human behavior so that people are encouraged to park, say for instance, in an underutilized parking lot rather than on the street. It incentivizes people to park in a different parking area so that we can have higher turnover, say for instance, on the street and have more people use the street for a shorter amount of time. Also, from a seasonal standpoint, it can also encourage different types or modes of transportation. So say, for instance, when it's very busy in the summer season, the parking rate would be higher, generally speaking, especially in the prime locations. And so maybe it's better for someone to use microtransit or Waverider instead. And actually, it may be more economical for them to use the Waverider than it is to park for two or three hours. and pay the parking rate. Also biking and walking, especially in the peak season. Those are great ways to get around and you don't have to take a car. That reduces the parking demand on the street and reduces the parking demand in the downtown or the north end where we have these high parking demands. The peak season is also peak tourist season as well. And so we're encouraging that demand higher rate would then be imposed on more of the seasonal visitors as well. We've done variable parking rates in the past. If you might recall many years ago or several years ago before COVID, we had lower parking rates in the parking lots and higher parking rates on the street. And so in that sense, again, we were encouraging people to use the underutilized parking lots. The beach lots, say for instance, will be higher because that's the highest demand parking areas. And so that reflects the higher parking rate. I'm gonna go to the next screen and show you. a grid of those variable parking rates. If you'll notice, they're grouped by twos. The different areas are have a seasonal peak season rate in the summer, which is May through August. We would be considering that May through August. And then the off peak months would be September through April. You'll see some of the parking rates are 50 cents higher in the peak season than they are now during all the year, the entire year. And then during the off season, many of them are the same price or they would be the same rate as today. You'll also notice town towards the bottom in the non-peer parking lots in downtown. In the off season, we would actually propose a lower parking rate in those underutilized lots. That gives back to the community in a sense so that we encourage people to come to downtown and visit and shop in the downtown during the off season. And then some of the parking rates are the same. This is all easily programmable when we go to our new parking system, and it will be automatically built into your pay-by app on your mobile phone.

So it won't be hard to understand for the general user.

And... I think I've covered it. I'm going to hand this back over to Emmy to talk about annual adjustments.

for walking us through the kind of rationale of setting variable parking meter rates citywide. So we'd like to transition to the concept of an annual adjustment to the parking meter rates. So we explored the annual adjustments to the rates based on examples we gleaned from another city, mainly city of Newport Beach. And we found the main purpose of having annual adjustments is to address the annual costs, the rising costs involved with maintaining the parking operations in addition to keeping up with capital obligations as well. Another purpose is to adjust the rates more frequently, which allows smaller annual incremental increases over time rather than proposing large sudden increases over every few years. It also allows a ramp up over the five year period so that the rates can start to build healthy reserves in the parking funds. And it also allows a ramp up so that the rates could then be closer in line to some of the other survey cities after a five year period. We also found that it's a more proactive method rather than a reactive method to address critical funding issues in advance. So like lot three, the city was reactive into that emergency and adjusted the rates at the time. However, this would be a more proactive method to address it annually, incrementally. And so it's also consistent with the process we found that was implemented with City of Newport Beach, where they adopted the annual increase of 10% within their coastal zone, and it was ultimately reviewed and approved by the Coastal Commission. So just a little bit of breakdown as to how the annual adjustment would work. It would take the variable rates that Eric had presented in the previous slide, and beginning July 1st, 2027, which would be a year from now, it would apply an annual adjustment of 10%, rounded down to the nearest five cents. And then it would adjust annually each year all up to July 2030. And with that, after the five-year period, the parking rates would then be revisited and brought back for further consideration by the PPIC and City Council. We found it interesting that Even after five years, the parking rates would then start to align with some of the other cities in the survey. So in this instance, the rates in July 2030, which is the column furthest to the right, the rates would be about $2.85 per hour at the lowest. up to $5.75 at the highest, which would be five years from now. But even that range is still lower than the $6 and $8 per hour rates that we saw in the previous slides in the survey. So even in five years, we would still be below the top three. Not to say that any of the other cities may also reevaluate their parking meter rates. So with that, I wanted to share a little bit about the coastal development permits. So as required, coastal development permits are submitted any time where there's a change to the parking meter rates within the coastal zone. Since the variable rates would increase the rates in some areas and decrease the rates in other areas, we are required to submit two coastal development permits. One for the appealable area and the other for the non-appealable area within the coastal zone. And the resolutions included in the packet would adjust the parking rates within the city owned parking spaces and lots in addition to the county and the state owned lots. The resolutions also would authorize the annual adjustments through July 2030. And so with that, we were curious as to what the fiscal impact would be by setting the variable rates and then allowing the annual adjustments through the five-year period. But before we dive into the fiscal impacts, I wanted to shed a little bit of light regarding how the parking funds operate. So we currently have three parking funds, including, as mentioned, the parking fund, the county parking lots fund, and the state pier and parking fund. Together, these are classified as enterprise funds, meaning they should operate as a business enterprise and they should be self-sustaining, meaning that they shouldn't be subsidized and that their associated rate revenue is sufficient to fund the ongoing operations of that fund, in addition to the capital costs of that fund. So the same classification to parking funds is also applied to, say, water and sewer funds. Those are recognized as utility enterprise funds. And those, too, cannot be subsidized by other funds. So moving on, I wanted to just touch on the actual impacts to these three funds as it relates to the variable rates and the annual adjustments. And so we built a model, a revenue projection model that looked at the various parking usage in all of the lots and locations. And we looked at the revenue associated with those lots and locations. And we applied the variable parking meter rates that were developed through the parking management study. So that was applied in fiscal year 20, in the fiscal year 27 projection. And then we applied the 10% annual adjustment in the four out years for fiscal year 28 through 2031. So from this we estimated the revenue increase within each of the applicable parking funds across the five years. I will add that you'll notice in fiscal year 27, we show a decrease in the estimated revenue growth in the county parking lots fund, and that's primarily due to the closure of Bruce's Beach during the 28th Street infiltration project, since that lot will be out of commission for the duration of the fiscal year. And then in fiscal year 28, you'll see that the revenue starts to pick back up because then Bruce's Beach parking lot begins to reopen and is now online. And from that point on, we start to see consistent growth year over year between fiscal years 29 through 2031. And so over the span of the five years, a buildup of about 4.7 million could be realized across the various parking funds. And it will add that this estimated annual growth in revenue is not a nice to have necessarily. It is a critical need to address the ongoing operations and the unfunded capital projects and associated with the parking funds. It also would be critical to help future debt service payments associated with Project Pulse because any parking improvements or parking capital projects would need to be borne by the respective parking funds. Lastly, I wanted to share that this fiscal impact is purely an estimate. It does not factor any unknown or unexpected impacts to say lot three if that was to come offline for reconstruction. It also doesn't reflect any potential impacts to lot four, lot two if those need to be taken offline at any point in the five-year period. It also does not factor the 2028 Olympics. So there could be peaks and there could be dips with the projection. So this, again, is just an estimate. It's a best estimate based on available data. And with that, I wanted to share a little bit more about the function of our parking funds. So you'll see the parking fund helps support the ongoing operations in the capital for the light blue areas, which is Lot 4 in the north. It also funds the operations in downtown for the Civic Center, Lots 1 through 7, Metlocks, in addition to all the on-street meters. So all of the costs... All the revenue of those lots goes into the parking fund and all of the expenditures in the parking fund helps support those parking lots and locations. The same will be said about the county parking lots fund in the navy blue. Those revenues go to support the El Porto and the Bruce's Beach parking lot improvements. and operations. And in addition, the state peer and parking fund that goes to support the lower and upper peer in addition to the peer maintenance. And so, we share this as context because each fund can only support its respective operations and the funds cannot co-mingle. They are separate funds and they cannot share revenue across the funds. For example, the parking fund cannot support the peer fund and vice versa. The exception to this is if funds are transferred as a loan for repayment. For example, a few years ago, the city completed the pier railing project. And at the time, the state pier fund did not have sufficient capital reserves to fund that upfront. And so the parking fund loaned to the peer fund, and the peer fund had to repay it over multiple years. So that is one instance where there could be transfers, but that's a repayment over time. And this all ties back to the understanding that parking funds operate as an enterprise fund, where they're self-sustaining and cannot rely on any subsidization from other funds. So that concludes the presentation on the parking meter rates. I'll pause at this time for any questions you might have. And if not, we can move on to the parking citations as part of the next stage of the presentation.

I think we have some questions. Council Member Hover?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, yeah, I have a couple different questions. First of all, I want to point out on slide five for our executive director of the Chamber of Commerce that the aging parking infrastructure, e.g. lots two and four, is called out because we were all in the meeting yesterday. earlier today with the North Manhattan bid. And they said, well, parking lot three is happening. When is parking lot four going to happen? And so there's a plan. An overall question, you have the three parking funds. And I hear you can't commingle. You could make a loan. But what would a parking authority do? Is there any utility in creating a Manhattan Beach Parking Authority, and does that allow us to commingle? Do we know what the value of that is?

That's an excellent question. I believe there was some research being conducted regarding establishment of a parking authority. I will add that they have authorization to issue financing through a parking authority. Aside from that, I'll let Libby kind of share some insights on that.

And I do have other questions. Okay, great. I want to hear it, yeah.

Well, I just wanted to mention that it is a pending city council work plan item for us to research a parking authority. And as Amy just mentioned, there are certain financing nuances to it, whether the city's issuing the debt versus the parking authority, and therefore a parking authority would likely not be rated a AAA rating like the city currently is. Interesting. So there could be differences in rates due to that. So we would have to analyze all of that with our municipal financial advisors and conduct further research. So it's on our work plan to continue this research and hopefully we'll make some traction on that this fall.

Great. Okay, a few other questions. Let's see. You know, I notice on page nine, slide nine, sorry. So it's talking about the proposed variable rate parking rates. And I was really interested in lines like one and two, which are the beach lots. So you have your beach lots summer, proposed rate per hour, $4, right? Because that's a peak, that's like the beach lots. Oh, good, here comes Eric. The beach lots, you know, it's prime parking, right? And then you have line 9 and 10, or 9, which is on-street summer, downtown, on-street summer, which is also $4. And it kind of strikes me that... Do we want to do that for people who are visiting our downtown because they're going to spend money here, whereas people who are visiting the beach are not necessarily going to spend more money here? Is there any logic there?

There is a logic behind having the same rates for the street parking and for the pier lots in the summer because if it was a higher rate in the pier lots, they would then move into the downtown and park there instead.

That makes sense. Last couple of things. Okay, kiosks. So it says in here somewhere that would be effective August 1st, 2026. Are we expected to have our parking kiosks installed by then?

That's an excellent question. So the parking kiosk implementation is underway and I believe the expected timeframe is in the fall, around November of this year. So the kiosk would not be implemented in time for the parking rate adjustments. So we would utilize our existing parking meter management system and the vendor that supports the parking enterprise, and we would work with the vendor to adjust the rates. I hope that addresses your question.

It does. I wonder about the signage for it, and would there be... Would it cause a glut, I think that would be the right word, of signage? Because, you know, if it's variable, you know, would it say, would we have stickers that say $4 an hour now? And then, you know, how would we address that?

Yeah. So there are no signs out there now that say how much your parking meter is. Well, golly gee. It's on the meter itself. And so that would just show up whenever the rate is.

I just put money in. Okay. All right. That's helpful. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Lesher.

Eric, I wanted to follow up if I could. You referenced in your presentation about underutilized parking and encouraging vehicles to park in the underutilized parking by virtue of variable pricing. Where are the underutilized parking spaces in our city right now?

Not right now. All of our parking lots are being fully used and our streets are being fully used. It's the summertime. It's very busy. It's the off-season where you're going to find more of the... available parking. And it's going to be in your city lots. It's going to be oftentimes, in fact, lot three is not full. And Metlox is not full on the upper level in the off-season.

So let me follow up. With regard to the current configuration of lot three, are you suggesting then the expectation is off-season, the current lot three will not be fully utilized?

During certain times of the day, it's not fully utilized.

Is there data then to support the idea that raising rates will deter use in certain spaces versus others? How elastic is the pricing structure with regard to how it impacts whether someone parks in a certain space?

It really comes down to how much someone's willing to pay for the parking that they want close to where they want to be parked.

Let me push back a little bit. I mean, in the ranges that we're talking about, $0.50 more, $2 more, is that really something that's going to deter parking in one space versus another?

When you're talking about three or four hours worth of parking, we want them to park in the parking lots. We don't want them to be parking in the street and try to feed the meter or anything like that.

Okay. So picking up on the question of the new parking system that's coming with the kiosks and all. Excuse me. is the parking rate really going to impact where vehicles are parking? I'm trying to understand the impact of this beyond raising more money for the city, how it's going to impact behavior, particularly when during the high season there's only so many spaces that we have.

I believe it will for certain users. And so say for instance, like lot one, lot two, there's available parking in the off season. It's really an off season issue more than anything else. And then, When they know on their phones, oh, there's available parking over here, and it's cheaper, then they're going to go park there. It's really a matter of educating the public, and that's done through the mobile phone. Right now, you don't see it because you don't know where that is and where the parking is available at any certain time.

Great. Thank you.

Great. Council Member Sherrill.

Thank you. A couple of questions. Did we... Did we do any kind of survey to find out how much of the usage is by our residents in town? I remember we did that for sales tax and that was very helpful. So I think it would be very kind of pertinent that we find out how much of this is gonna impact residents.

Thank you for the question. Currently, we don't have the available data to identify which parking usage is a resident versus a non-resident. And I believe, per Eric, the parking management study that was conducted, it also did not identify what was resident versus non-resident utilization. It just looked at overall utilization of the parking spaces. There are several, upwards of 100,000 transactions a year and so to have that level of data, our systems just don't have that capacity.

I understand that and thank you for the answer, I guess. You know, part of our responsibility is to protect increases of fees and taxes that mainly impact our residents and businesses. And we've got a lot of menu items for revenue increases and tax increases coming up. I guess I... I may be a little disappointed that we don't have that information since about 95% of the transactions are credit card transactions in the meters, and that information should be readily available from our third party that collects that information, similar to who does our sales tax at HDL. They were able to kind of bifurcate that and tell us two-thirds were outside of the city. that's important. That'll be another question I'll ask for parking citations as well. Hopefully there's some data on that. Other than that, I guess I would want to understand a cumulative increase from 2020 $2 street rates to what's proposed now. I'm getting a real large number. I guess if you guys can calculate that and let me know what, or let the public know what the overall percent increase was from 2020 to 2025 on streets and beach, and then what the new proposed is going to be, you know, because I'm getting 50, 75% overall between 2020 and 2026 proposed. So I guess I just want to confirm my numbers are not off, that we're increasing, we're proposing to increase greater than 50% in some areas.

Absolutely, thank you for the question. So we did include as part of the presentation materials a background on the rate adjustments that occurred in 2020 in addition to the 2021 up until last year. So we did provide that information for context as to kind of how the program has evolved over the years. And based on the variable parking meter rates that were developed through the parking management study, we really looked at the comparison of the current rates at in place at this time and about and compared that to the proposed rate structure um we hadn't compared all the rates from six years ago till now into the future we really just looked at the current structure now and compared that to the future uh proposed rates so um i hope that addresses the question

It does a little bit, just in generally looking at the beached lots, it's almost 70% increase. It's 50% when we increased it in 2025 to 350, and then now increasing it to the variable rate on the peak hours, it's going to be another 20%. So I'm just kind of concerned a little bit about the amount of fees that we're increasing for parking, but I'll stop there. Question... You mentioned there's only one city doing annual adjustments, and that's the highest city on your survey. I think it was slide, is it slide seven?

Yes.

Yeah, and I certainly, and I know we're at the bottom, and a couple of the other cities jumped us from 2025 to now. Did we just look at variable rates or did we look at some other opportunities to keep it fixed rates like we have $2.50 in the streets and lots and $3.50 at the beach? Did we look at $3 on the streets and $4 at the beach and see what that revenue would generate?

We mainly focused on the recommended rates that were developed through the Walker consultants and really didn't deviate from their recommendations since they observed the occupancy and all of the lots and locations and they developed those rates so we didn't modify them or offer alternatives to what they recommended. Hopefully that...

It does, and I guess, and that's fine that you had a consultant do this and provide the data. I guess from my perspective, I would have, you know, since council gave the policy to bring these back, I would have liked some options to keep it, you know, static and, you know, potentially go $3 and $4 and not have variable interest, variable rates, because you've got, the other slide, you've got North End getting a lower rate on the streets on off-peak than the downtown, and So I guess I'm concerned. Again, I'm concerned the fact that we're going away from you know, not so much standard operations. I'm always, we're doing the best practice, but you know, what are we really trying to do here, I guess?

So I wanted to highlight that the parking management study is parking management. And so we are looking to find where are the best places to park? Where do we want them to park? It's not financially driven in that sense, okay? So the rates are not financially, we weren't looking for a particular goal of a certain amount of revenue. That's not the point of the parking management study. Those numbers and that variability is based off of trying to find the right occupancy and the right fit and have people find parking. That's defensible as far as your parking rate systems are. As far as the coastal commission is concerned, they can support that kind of rate structure. You are entirely open to suggesting a different rate. higher, lower, whatever, but that is the basis that this is tracking.

And I understand that, and I understand about what the objective of the parking management study was. I'm just curious as to, we gave direction to come back and give us some rates, but I would have liked to see some options to see what, if we're talking about debt service of potentially a million dollars on parking, you know, what would have really taken to get there if we had, you know, fixed rates versus variable rates. I don't know which one's higher because I don't have the analytics, and I would have really liked to see how much impact this would have given our residents. meaning what is our resident impact? That's what we're here is to understand that. Again, we did that with sales tax for a reason. Sure.

We don't have that information. That data is not collected in the form of parking meter revenue. What you can do is it tracks very similar to what your sales are in your downtown or in your north end. So if your sales are tracking the same way, that two-thirds of your sales are from out of town, That's going to track the same because they need to park somewhere for that too. And so it's going to track the same.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I just don't want to make that assumption. Thank you. No more questions. Great.

So I just want to confirm there was something said about lots two and four and their useful life. When were they built with relation to lot three? And how many years of useful life do they have now? And I recognize they're going to need some work, but is it as critical as Lot 3 was three years, two years ago?

Well, I'm looking at our public works friends over there. I don't think we have those exact numbers in front of us at this moment. If you'd like, we could try to look it up quickly. But our understanding is they were built around the same time, but they were also... built differently than lot three, which was a steel structure. So they are regularly looked at, but we're...

So it's not dire.

The biggest difference, Mayor, is that lot three was an entirely steel structure and the other lots are concrete structures. And our biggest issue with lot three was the corrosion of the steel.

Right. Okay, so I'm just trying to time the urgency, you know, because that could help with staggering, you know, getting the revenue. So that's all. So we don't need the information now, but if you can get back to us.

Absolutely. And that's also why we incorporated the assessments for those structures into our CIP this year. so that we can get more information from an updated structural assessment to bring back to the council. Sure.

Okay, great. And Councilmember Lesser stole my line. Elasticity, I'll add, of demand. So my business school education came forward here. So elasticity of demand. Where is someone, $5 an hour downtown, taking the kids to get some ice cream cones or something, and I'm there for an hour or two hours, you know, that's $10. I mean, what... Where are we in danger of people not coming to visit our businesses?

I'll just make a sidebar comment. Our parking rates are very reasonable across Southern California. It doesn't impede people from going places. If you are parking for $5 for an hour and you take your family to go get ice cream, the ice cream bill is going to be $30. If you go to the movies, it's $17 a person. That's today's rates. That's the world we live in now. You don't find cheap parking rates anymore.

So the increases that you're talking about are, I don't know, what would we call it in economics? It's not adjusted to a CPI. So it's adjusted, but it's not. My point being is that if we trigger this increase, but the CPI is coming down in the economy, People are going to say to us, why are you raising rates while inflation is going down? And we'd have to go in and explain, oh, they were set two or three years ago. We didn't know what CPI was going to be. But we, of course, are looking for a revenue target.

Thank you Mayor Franklin. So the current presentation materials, the annual adjustments that are being proposed are not in the form of a CPI. It's a 10% annual escalator to ramp up the rates to help build reserves over a five year period of time. And that ramp-up period allows it to where the parking meter rates in five years would be in the range of $2.85 up to $5.75 per hour. And that would still be below the top cities in the survey in present day. So it's not a CPI percentage that's applied. It's just an annual escalator, annual ramp-up to kind of level out the rates.

Mm-hmm.

And I will add the survey is based on public parking in local jurisdiction, city-owned parking. We did not explore private parking. But in our research, we found they were much higher because they are treated as an enterprise function. So I went to a special event in Beverly Hills. I paid $35 in parking for three hours. On average, 10 plus per hour. So we really focused on just public parking and did not look at private parking. But in the private sector, you will see much higher rates to park. Okay.

Thank you. And then, so ticket citation revenue was not a part of the analysis.

That would be the next phase of the presentation, so we're about. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, okay. We're almost there. All right. We can move on once we've concluded conversation on the parking meter rates.

Okay, and then one other question is we talk about incentives for alternative transportation. I don't really see a definite, targeted, ride your bike to the beach or some sort of program. Is there something that we could put together? I mean, people may not even realize it. They may not know where the bike racks are. Of course.

Et cetera, et cetera. Of course. Many of the parking strategies in our downtown, sorry, in our city parking management study include exactly that. changing the web page, getting social media out, promoting bicycling, and showing people where you can park your bikes, encouraging walking to different places. That's all part of the parking management strategy. So yes, you will see more awareness and more alternative transportation in our materials. We're heavily promoting that. the wave rider right now, of course, and that's kind of the first of our launching campaigns.

Okay, great. Thank you. That's all for now. Do we have additional questions? I do. Mayor Korten?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't know who can best answer this, but can you remind me again, historically, when was the last time, other than our recent endeavors in looking at our parking rate, when was the last time we increased rates or did a rate study?

for the question. So in April of 2025, we revisited the parking meter rates. Prior to last year, the rates hadn't been adjusted in four years prior to that. So that was 2021. There was one adjustment to, I believe, the beach lots. And in 2020, there was an adjustment to the city lots. With the parking meter rates, there's typically not like a full in-depth financial study. It's based on parking management strategies that are developed, the rates that are developed through that. So there isn't like a rate study per se, but it's an outcome from the strategies that came out of the study.

Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so just to clarify, my understanding of how the funds are used, the parking... funds from each of these, from the parking fund, is meant to help us with infrastructure and maintenance, right? It can't be used for other endeavors. It's an enterprise fund, right? So the usage, I mean, The usage from residents to non-residents, it's the same usage and it's the same requirement on maintenance and the same repair. It doesn't matter who's using the lot, right? So while I appreciate the question of making sure that our residents are protected from rate increase, because this is directly correlated with the maintenance and management of the parking area, it across the board applies to anybody who uses those parking spots, is that correct? That's correct. Okay.

So the utilization of our parking systems is gonna be the same cost per use regardless of resident versus non-resident. We'll have annual operational costs, current year, future year, capital replacement costs, regardless of who parks in the spaces.

Okay, thank you. And then, once we get the new parking kiosk in place, and through usage of the app, will it be able to tell us where parking spots are available? Because I do appreciate the question. Like, will people know that there are cheaper rates a little bit further away from the beach and it's available? So if I'm down by the beach and... there looks like there's 20 spots up there. It makes it worthwhile for me to drive up. Will I be able to ascertain that from the app?

Absolutely. We're really excited about the platform that we have coming up because both the user, the customer, will be able to see live where a parking is available, what the parking rates are for that area, how to get there. We will know. We'll be able to track how many people are using it, what the occupancy rate is, at any time of day, live. And so we can have that number. We can know what your utilization is in the summertime, in lock three, or whatever it is. So it's a much more robust type of program. We will have reporting available on all of that. We'll also be able to have reporting on credit card transactions and where those people live with regard to those credit card transactions. We're estimating 90 to 95% of the people will be using their phone to pay for parking. The kiosks are going to be secondary, really, and only used for people that maybe don't have the app yet or that are tourists and they choose to use the kiosk instead.

Thank you. And then also, I think from what I've learned with parking lot three, we weren't prepared for that kind of repair or rebuild actually that's needed. Will this help us prevent that type of unplanned emergency, having the reserves?

Yes, it would make us much more prepared for that, to at least have funds in the bank for the feasibility studies, design work that may be needed. So I think it would position us in a much better place in the future. Because as Emmy noted at the beginning of her presentation, we do have infrastructure needs into the future. And we currently do not have the fund balance to fund the design work, so we will need funds available to pay debt service or put cash towards the projects if we wanted to maintain a lower debt service and make other investments.

Right, and so whenever there's an emergency and unplanned, like what we had in parking lot three, and we don't have the funds in our parking fund, where do the funds come from to fix or rebuild?

It's an excellent question. So the funds would need to come from the general fund. We would have to borrow it from another fund. We would have to take out a loan, issue a further debt. So it would be a scramble to make those decisions on where the funds would come from in the event of another lot three emergency.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you for the question.

Council Member Lessing.

I just want to pick up on the Mayor Patem's questions and also the Mayor's comments. I think getting the projection of the remaining useful life of lots four and two and just a scale of what might be required to keep those operational would be helpful, certainly in making our case for why we might be increasing parking rates to build that fund. I wanted to pick up on a question that my colleague asked about the impact to residents. And maybe this is a question for a parking traffic engineer, if I could. Better understand the impact of increased rates on businesses. Because on the one hand, the traditional analysis is you increase rates, you encourage more turnover of spaces. And in theory, there's more business, there's more commerce that occurs because of that turnover in rates. But to what extent is increasing rates a negative for businesses? Because to the extent we're concerned about the impact on our residents, obviously we're concerned about the impact on businesses as well.

Well, the reality is that sometimes for some people, you know, a high parking rate may have people going to downtown fewer times, say for instance. I think that the knowledge that we'll be able to give the residents that the resident about where the parking is and what the parking rates are they can make their choice to have a lower rate parking in a lot rather than on the street so it won't discourage residents from from using parking it's just where they're going to park let me leave it there for them thank you council member shorely thank you quick follow-up question uh... mentioned earlier that

you know, with Project Pulse, that potential debt service would be around, let's say a million dollars. I think he had 600 to 1.4 million. And looking at your chart on slide 12, with the potential revenue increases, the estimated, I really don't see annually how that's even covering potentially the debt service that we might. that these are your annual increases and our reserves are really non-existent or minimal right now because we can't really do much. Like you said, can't even really do design. So this analysis here versus your previous slide that said there'd be a debt service payment of up to $1.4 million, where's that gonna come from if these parking meter rates are increased?

Thank you for the question. So this slide here reflects the year over year increase. So it doesn't show the compounded every year. So within fiscal year 27, we anticipate across three funds, an increase of 375 in fiscal year 28. It would be the 1.358 plus the prior year increase. So each year would build and the rate revenue would increase more year over year.

Quick, I totally get that. My question is, out of this parking fund, you are paying for the debt service. So I'm looking at the top line where it's 975, but your expense is $1.4 million. So these are negative delta in every single year. I guess if you're increasing this to pay that debt service, it's not enough to pay that debt service. I'm saying first line on slide 12.

So if I'm hearing what you're saying, so you're looking at the per fiscal year, the 9-16 for fiscal year 27, the 7-25 for fiscal year 28, and so on and so forth. That dollar amount doesn't reflect... All of the new rate revenue for that given year, that reflects the increase over the previous year column. So let's say for fiscal year 28 for the parking fund, you would realize the 900,000 plus you would realize the 725 on top of that. So it would be 1.6 million in the parking fund net change from the baseline year. and then the year after that would be another $574,000. So it compounds.

I understand that. I guess my question is what you don't have built into this is your debt service potentially.

We don't know what it is, and we don't factor it in this slide because we're simply presenting just the net increase, the year-over-year increase in revenue. We're not factoring debt. We're not presenting the increased costs for debt service, but the year-over-year increase would support the net new cost of debt service. So it would be able to support a $1.4 million debt service based on year-over-year increases in the parking fund.

Okay.

or get us closer to the 1.4 million plus increases to operations plus possible fronting some of the capital lessening the load on the debt service in the out years. So it could be a combination and it would all vary depending on the final scope of Project Pulse and the final scope of whichever parking lot improvement project that the city would incur in the years ahead. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

on that slide, it's just showing us the increase, right? So we're not starting with what the base is. So let's say in fiscal year 2026, the parking fund, and I'm making up a number here, folks, but let's say the parking fund had $300,000 in it, or collected $300,000 in revenue, that 916 is on top of that. It's just the increased amount. Okay, so that's, okay. And then the only, I just, something the mayor brought up about the 10% CPI, and you were trying to say, well, decouple it with the word CPI. I think we... it feels like you're trying to build in an annual increase of some sort so that we don't come back and do these bigger increases. So, Council Member Tarnay was asking, well, when was the last time before 2025 that we raised rates? So you had rates raised in 2021, 2020, but that's four years. So instead of coming and saying, we're going to increase it $1.50, you're trying to make each year just feel like the rest of the world feels. And I'm really excited to hear inflation's going down because that's, that'll help me out a lot. But anyway, so, but they're supposed to be, whether it's 10%, 5%, whatever, it's just like what we're trying to maybe do with some of the business license tax stuff is that you're trying to make a build in so we don't have to keep coming back. Right. And, and let's increase it a lot. The other thing though, again, related to council member Tornay was it, it, The last time we did a parking management study, so we've talked about increases, 2025, 2021, 2020, but the last time we did a parking management study, which again, is studying where we park people, not necessarily the money needed to provide that. When was that?

So the last time we did a downtown parking management study was 2008, which was approved in 2009. Right. So over 10 years ago.

Yeah. I wasn't dying my hair as much back then.

Colleagues, can we let the staff continue?

I just have one question, please, because it's related to the increases and how, you know, I see that, you know, we're doing this through 2031. So... The proposal is that at that point we would revisit this issue so that we're not having, we're not doing this every five years, but we're planning for the next five years. Is that correct?

Thank you for the question. That is correct. It would currently sunset after the five-year period. By July 1st, 2030, there wouldn't be any additional increases at that point unless it was reevaluated and brought before PPIC and the City Council. However, staff actively monitors the parking revenues, monthly, quarterly, as part of our mid-year and as part of our budget process. We see the trends on a monthly basis, and we can actively assess the funds, the health of the parking enterprises. So if there are larger scale increases in the parking fund, we can go before the five-year, but we would return to council before recommending any other adjustments.

Great. Thank you.

All right. So thank you so much.

Hi, good evening, Council. City Engineer Gil Gamboa. Just to answer Mayor Franklin's question about the age of the parking structures. Oh yeah, please. Lot three was 1971. Lot two was 1979. Lot four is about that same time frame in the late 70s. Lot two and four are primarily concrete structures. Lot three was a structural steel on that. The lot two and four received some cracked ceiling repairs. right around 2016 to 2019 on that. They both received a tier one structural for fire life and safety, so they beat the code still. We're just 10 years, you know, 10, 12 years later, it's time to do another assessment for them. Lots two and four. Thank you.

All right, great. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm gonna jump into our parking citation presentation. So with that, similarly, we wanted to share some background regarding the parking citations. The city's parking citation fines are also reevaluated periodically to ensure that citation revenue can continue to support the rising costs that are in the general fund and the operations of the parking enforcement team and the replacement of capital equipment and vehicles that are operated by the parking enforcement. And so the city's parking citation penalties were last updated in 2025 around the same time, at the same time we adjusted the parking meter rates. So last spring, the city council considered adjusting the parking citations from $53 at the time to $65 which was based on the survey results from last year. However, direction was given to limit that increase to only $6 which effectively adjusted the citation to $59 for most citations. And then 10 years prior to that, in 2015, council approved a $5 increase to all parking citations, which resulted in a typical citation of $53. So went from 53 to 59 over the span of 10 years. So fast forward to more recent events. On June 2nd, the parking citations were discussed again during the fiscal year 27 budget presentation and were identified as a critical revenue enhancement need within the general fund due to the rising costs and operations citywide and also a wide impact increase on all operations including parking enforcement. At that meeting, City Council provided direction to proceed with the parking citation revenue strategy. And this brings us to today's presentation to consider and reevaluate the city's parking citation penalties. So a little bit on the city's parking enforcement operations. Like other costs in the general fund, the parking enforcement operations has also seen increase in costs. Parking enforcement activities include ticketing for violations. It also includes supporting traffic incidents, so they're taken offline to address critical traffic issues. And they also, parking enforcement provides support for special project, sorry, special events that occur throughout the year. The parking enforcement operations include salaries and benefits including the increases per MOU and currently there are full-time employees are about 15 within parking enforcement and there's variable part-time based on peak summer weekends, holidays and special events. We're also seeing inflationary increases in materials and services within the parking enforcement program, and there are parking enforcement vehicles that continue to need replacement. We have deferred vehicle replacements within the fleet replacement process, but then there's also a new CSO, a community service officer vehicle that was requested as part of the fiscal year 27 budget. However, that request was deferred to a future year due to limited funding availability in the general fund. And so that was deferred as well. And we're also seeing advancements with parking operations and technology as reflected in the license plate recognition LPR program that came before council a few months ago. And that technology is really going to advance the way that parking enforcement officers can detect the expired meters more readily. They'll be able to issue parking citations. in a much more enhanced capacity by using the LPR technology. And so similar to the parking meter rates, we also were curious as to what some of the other jurisdictions have for their parking citations. Mainly to understand how we currently compare to the other cities. So as background again, in 2025, the parking citations increased by $5, making the average citation about $53. And then most recently, 2025, the citations were adjusted by $6, making the average citation to be about $59. Despite raising the citations last year to the $59 amount, we're still seeing the city's penalties rank seventh lowest on the list compared to the other cities. So we're just above Culver City and Beverly Hills. And since last year, we found that four cities have since adjusted their parking citations. And those cities include Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Newport, and Huntington, which have all increased their citation penalties for parking violations. So with that, based on the survey results from last year and a refresh of the survey results this year, we're seeing the average citation to be in the range of $65. So we recommend adjusting the parking citations by $6 to reach that average. And on one hand, it aligns with the average market rate that we're seeing through the survey. And on the other hand, it's the same penalty that was recommended last April of 2025. So revisiting it again, it's still the average baseline. Additionally, parking citations naturally are intended to encourage parking turnover in high demand parking utilization. And so thereby creating more available parking space, freeing up parking space when there's more aggressive citations and penalties for staying longer than the time limit. And lastly, I wanted to share that there are no recommended adjustments to the late penalty, which is currently $38 if it's not paid timely. And so similar to the parking meter rates, we explored the idea of the annual adjustment to these citations. And again, the purpose of an annual adjustment is to allow the annual increases to keep pace with the rising costs the city anticipates every year, and those rising costs involved with the parking enforcement operations and the capital equipment needs of the parking enforcement division. It's also to adjust the rates or the fines more frequently, which allows for the smaller incremental adjustments rather than large increases over time. you know every few years and it also allows similarly a ramp up over five years to be in line with the survey cities and so how it works it essentially adjusts the current typical sign from 59 dollars to 65 dollars so that would reflect a flat six dollar increase upon all citations And then beginning July 1st, 2027, so in about a year from now, it would adjust it by 5%. So it would be a lesser percentage, but that's because the citation amount is much greater than an hourly meter rate. And so what that does is that year over year, the citations would go up by about $3 per year. and the 5% gets rounded down to the nearest $1. So you'll see it would start at 65, and by the fifth year, by July 2030, the average citation would be about $77. I will add that even after a five-year period, the citations would still be under the top two cities that we observed in the survey. So if we... refer to this original survey, a $77 citation five years out, we would still be below Redondo Beach and Newport Beach in this instance.

And some local news recently coming out in the last week. The city of Hermosa Beach did actually recently increase theirs further. It was just in a Daily Breeze article today that it will be going up to $75 as of August 1st. So we're definitely not alone in looking at these rates right now.

And local news, that was funny.

Things are ever evolving in real time. So just keeping pace with all of the other jurisdictions is actively monitoring what others are doing. So thank you for that Libby. So I wanted to turn to the fiscal implications slide. So based on the $6 increase to the current fine, plus the additional annual adjustments in the years out, for fiscal year 27, we would see an estimated $290,000 increase, and that would go into the general fund to support increases in operations for parking enforcement. Then in fiscal years 28 through fiscal year 2031, we would see an annual year over year increase of 180,000. That would be year over year increase over the prior year. I will add that this estimate is based on factoring an average of about 60,000 parking citations annually. And it also factors removing costs that we incur by remitting payments to the Superior Court. For every parking citation issued, the city's required to remit $12.50 to the county of that citation, and that goes to the county court system. And so we don't get the full share. It's a fixed $12.50 that has to be remitted. So we factor that cost as part of the citation penalty revenue projection. And as discussed in the fiscal year 27 budget adoption process, the general fund has seen rising costs citywide, including the parking enforcement operations. So this increased revenue would really support the general fund to offset the rising costs related to the parking enforcement and the capital equipment needs in addition to vehicle replacements. Lastly, I wanted to share that just like parking meter revenue projection, this too is purely an estimate. It doesn't factor any changes or deviations to the annual volume of citations that are issued. It doesn't factor any parking lot closures that may result in parking tickets as well or any other regional events that could impact parking citations such as Olympics or other special events. But again, we monitor this program monthly and we present any deviations to revenues we present during the quarterly budget and the mid-year budget and annual budget process. So at this point, we can open up for questions regarding the parking citation increase or alternatively, we can move to the recommended action. But I will pause for any questions on the citations at this time.

Council Member Howard.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the revenues generated by parking citations, minus the money that goes to the Superior Court, goes to support the function of ticketing, et cetera, and running the, it can go to labor, right? It goes to labor, not CSO. Is it called CSO? Yeah, it is. It is. It's a CSO. And I appreciate that. for budgeting purposes, we held off on the vehicle. Is there any thought, well I guess, do some of them use sort of like a golf cart type car, or are they all cars?

I believe there's a variation of vehicles that are used out in the field. I don't have the specifics on the make and model.

It's okay, I was just wondering, like if we think about You know, what this is paying for, we really do, I know staff really tries to look at all angles, both revenue and then expenses and all these things. So I was just trying to be creative that way. I, let's see, I don't have more questions about this. I will go back to the fees or rates for the parking meters later.

Okay, great. So my questions are, I just want to make sure of the math on slide 21. So I went through and I added that all up, and that's $1,010,769 that our fund is going to have additionally, right? This is new net revenue.

This is new net revenue and I don't have the information in front of me. I can certainly try to retrieve it, but this reflects a year over year increase. So in the first year, it would be a $290,000 increase. In the second year, there would be on top of that, there would be 180 that would add on that. On the third year, another 180 on top of that. So it compounds every year, and I don't have the full compounded amount available, but I could certainly get the information.

Okay, I just want to get an idea of the full scale. So it's $290,000 on top of what? You know, what our regular citation is.

Our current citation revenue, I believe it's in the $2.7 million range. Okay. But that also, we have expenditures that we pay the court system as well.

So it matches up with the 10% that you're kind of, well, 5% you're asking for. Okay, great. Can you just give me an idea of You don't have to give away whatever doesn't need to be given away. So now you have a CSO in a car. They pull up to the car. They check the license plate. Is that what they do? They're not marking pavement anymore, right?

So with the new LPR technology, it will make a much more advanced process to where the pay stations, when a customer goes to pay for their parking, they'll be required to input their driver's license. And the system will recognize that that license plate is now expired. And so the parking enforcement team has handhelds.

The meter money has expired.

Yes, that the meter has expired. And so the parking enforcement team currently are equipped with these handhelds that are mobile, that it would scan a license plate and it would immediately sync with the payment system to intercept whether that license plate is expired. And so once it's expired then that would trigger the need to issue a citation. And then there are other forms of identifying violations that are beyond a license plate such as street sweeping and other other types of parking violations that are detectable just from the naked eye. Another would be an instance of parking hang tag, a permit hang tag, and other forms. But I believe the LPR system will be able to integrate a lot of the technology to help create more efficiencies with the current way that the parking tickets are issued.

Okay, so if I'm... the CSO and I'm going into Lot 3, will it show me the expired, in other words, do I have to stop at each one or do a car or do I know, get an idea of which ones are expired?

I don't have on hand the specific function of...

I'm seeing Eric doing some nodding there.

So, and the license plate reader technology can operate in two different ways. For the example that you're asking for lot three, all the users will have put in their license plate and they will have had a parking session that they pay for. If the parking session expires, then the officer knows which cars have expired plates, if you will, right? They'll go right to the car and put a citation on the car. They don't have to come back like the old days where they would have to chalk the tire and then come back two hours later and chalk the tire again. So they'll save a step, a big step in not having to come back twice. In other areas of the city where we don't have parking meters, they will use the license plate as if it is a chalked tire. So they'll come by The license plate reader will pick up the license plate. They'll come back two hours later, and they'll be able to read the license plate again. If it's past the maximum time, they can give a ticket. So it expedites the citation process.

And on the convenience side, I've seen it where they will send you a text. if your time is about to expire. Right.

So for our metered parking, you'll be able to get a warning before your time expires if you still have maybe more time that you could put on to your parking session up to your maximum time. You can add more right there in the restaurant or wherever until the maximum time is reached.

Good. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Shirley.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, I guess I'm gonna ask the question, do we know of the 60,000 parking citations that are written, how many of them are written to residents?

Half of them are to me.

Outside of the half to Amy.

We can see if we can retrieve some of that information right now, but I guess while Emmy is looking, I just wanted to throw out there that now we're talking about parking citation penalties and fines. So if someone is violating our municipal code, do we, our vehicle code, municipal code, do we care if they're from in town or out of town? Right. Not that we don't care, but I understand wanting to know the impact on our residents, but if they're violating our code, then I would think we would issue the citation regardless, and I don't think that's a road we want to go down, you know, discriminating local versus non-local visitors.

Right, and I'm not saying those things, so my question was more online, do you have the information? So if you don't have the information, then that's the question I have for that.

Okay.

So question of the...

Thank you so much for the question. Just to add, based on our parking ticketing software, we're seeing for fiscal year 26, 16% of all parking citations are associated with Manhattan Beach residents, 84% the remainder are non-residents. So it mainly impacts non-residents, travelers, being a destination city. really high rate of penalties that are really impacting the non-residents.

Gotcha, and thank you for answering my question. And of the other cities, did you, on this annual increase, which is new to me, I only say that because it's nice to come to council as council changes periodically. Maybe every couple of years, I don't know what the policy is, if there's new policy in finance to have an opportunity to come to council and say this is the new cost of living, but increasing it every year based on trying to catch up to the number one parking citation penalties, and I understand these are fines, but did we look at those other cities and see how many of them? You mentioned when we did the parking meters, you mentioned the fact that only one city, I think it was Newport, which is the highest, does it incremental. And it's fine doing it small increments, but it's also something to be said about coming every couple years and to the community and saying that we'd like to request this for that reason as economies of scale changes. demand might change, things might change, but we're just taking it as a linear, looking it out four years and saying, or five years and saying, this we want to increase at 5% because we're still going to be low. So did we do that?

We looked at the other cities through the survey and we didn't see other cities implementing an annual adjustment. They take them periodically every year, every few years, just as we have done. But this would be a kind of a proactive method of adjusting it in smaller increments every year than having to reassess after three, four years a big jump of $6.00. you know, or more. And so this would be pacing it at a slower pace, allowing it time over a five year period to increase so that after five years, we're still in line with some of the survey cities in present day. So that was really the rationale and gleaning off the structure that was proposed for the parking meter rates, looking at aligning that same method of keeping pace annually, applying that upon the parking citation. So it was inspired by the parking citation annual adjustment.

Gotcha, and typically when we do a survey, it's like we look and see what other cities are doing. What other cities have an annual escalator for parking citations?

there are no other cities, in our survey at least, that have an annual increase to the parking citations.

And in the parking meter, there's only one?

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, turn it.

Thank you. And just to piggyback on Council Member Sherlian's question, do we know if those other cities come back annually for increases or adjustments because that's, you know.

Yes, so based on the parking citation survey, we compared last year's survey to this year's survey and four of those cities adjusted and increased their parking citations. Actually, five? five as of today with Hermosa Beach. So we're seeing other cities adjust it on an annual basis or a higher frequency. So we're just proposing a more leveled out approach rather than larger scale every year.

Okay, thank you. And then one question that I have regarding the unlicensed plate reader. I mean, I've noticed that some residents have written in about front license plate citations for missing front license plate. that part of what's going on, just moving to, you know, preparing to move to the license, or is that something independent?

It's an independent state law that says you must have a front license plate, and you can be cited for it now, just like any other violation of the vehicle code. It's more important when you start having a license plate reader program. It's not... It's helpful, because when you're reading the license plate as you're going down the road, you might be able to pick it up from the back, but sometimes you can't pick it up from the back, but you can pick up the front license plate. But it is the law.

Is it a fix-it ticket for the first one, or is it an automatic citation, and then you have to...

I can defer to the police department. My understanding is that it's a fix-it ticket.

It's a fix-it ticket. It's a fix-it ticket. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Interesting. I don't know. I got one. I've had one, too.

Mine was a fix-it ticket. Yours wasn't? It wasn't. No, it was my Thunderbird. I don't have the front license.

I've had one.

That's okay. I deserved it. Okay, so I'm next in line here. I just want to confirm, Eric, please, because we did talk about some sensitive data. When we say license registration, we're... we're not looking for other things, right? We only can use that information as it pertains to parking.

The license plate reader system is an independent system. It's not connected to the other surveillance systems for us.

Okay. So in looking up the license plates, we've got some access to it.

It's only based off of the... database for parking purposes. It's not associated even with a particular person.

Okay. And could I get, I kind of want... I kind of want to get an idea of the whole picture. And with the whole picture, you know, we talked about lots two and four are eight years younger, if you can look at it that way, than parking lot number three. Number three is our example here of what can happen. It's a five-year period. We're not realistically going to be rebuilding once we employ these numbers, you know, these... We're not going to be rebuilding lots number two and four right away. It's for future. I'd kind of like to see if there's a possibility of spreading this out more years as we can see the actual demand. We're going to know what parking lot three would cost or parking lot two would cost, parking lot four. We may not address them until seven or nine years later. respectively down, I kinda wanna see the whole, all the numbers put together, what we're collecting now, what we're gonna be anticipating to collect, what our bonding needs will be and our borrowing needs will be, and then also see how much have we actually, what kind of job have we done by making reserves for parking lots

I know that we were not specific in the slideshow about the unfunded projects and the things that still need to be capital projects that we're still anticipating. Gil can probably come up here and talk about the CIP more specifically. The increase in the five years would help fund those types of unfunded projects until we get to the point where we are building or designing a parking structure for Lot 3 or MBB. But you want to be able to have that proven revenue so that you can get the bond, so that you can have bond repayments being paid for by your parking fund. If you can't prove it, you're not going to be able to get that reimbursement.

But I thought it had to apply to parking. you know, to parking lots or?

Right, there are many capital projects that are related to parking lots. General CIP, okay, okay. Yeah, so what is it? The parking projects related to, or that are in the CIP.

I'd kind of like to see that overview, just to get to see.

And the other thing we can do, too, is we can also come back in a year or two, review, update, provide you guys with additional information so that you can feel comfortable with continuing the annual adjustment.

Right, okay, okay. Mayor Pro Tem, turn it over.

Yes, thank you. I mean, I appreciate just kind of doing an assessment of what are the parking lot two and four. But as far as what we do have in front of us is parking lot three that needs to be rebuilt. So any funds that we're collecting through revenue increase for the parking fund can be used either to you know, put towards actual payment for rebuilding parking lot three or to justify funding, right?

Correct, and it could also help us pay for the assessments for the other parking lots, parking structures.

So we do have a current need for the increased revenues. Okay, thank you.

That's all I have. Thank you. Okay, I don't see any more questions from council.

No, sir.

So I'm going to open it up for public comment. Is there more?

Apologies. Just the last slide to kind of close it all together. Thank you, Mayor. So at this stage, staff recommends that the council open up the public hearing or conduct the public hearing regarding both the variable parking meter rates and the parking citation penalties. If adopted, the new variable parking rates and the citations would take effect immediately. In about three weeks from now, not three years, three weeks from now on August 1st, 2026, these three weeks would allow sufficient time to program the new variable rates with the current parking management system in place, and it would also allow for the 15-day appeal period for the coastal development permits to take effect. It would also allow time to program the adjusted parking citation penalty fines with the parking ticket system as well. Following the August 1st date, the rates would adjust annually in July 1st through 2030. That concludes the presentation this evening. I'm happy to answer any further questions or we can open up the public hearing at this time. Thank you.

Any further questions? All clear? Okay, so we'll open it up to public comments here in the chambers. Going once. Going twice. Okay, so how about online?

Yes, we have Lisa Middleman.

Hi, this is Lisa Middleman. I'm a 30-year resident in Manhattan Beach. My kids have grown up here. I'm trying to listen to more meetings, especially given the surprise of all the high-rise buildings. So anyway, while listening to this conversation, given our huge increase in city headcount, I was very surprised to hear that we have 15 full-time and then also some part-time ticketing officers. So one of the things I wanted to question in making these decisions about parking fees and parking tickets, I think probably you should look at the salary benefits and pension of all those ticketing officers. I'm sorry if I'm using the wrong terms. I don't know. As well as the vehicle costs that they use. and then gas or electricity used to run said vehicles, and then basically looking at the cost of what you're bringing in for ticketing revenue versus what this is costing you. I mean, if each of those ticketing people, which I think is probably a rather entry-level position, is getting a pension, those are the kind of things we need to look at besides just getting a ticket. So it's something I thought we should look at. And then the other thing is, In regards to the number of employees, if we're going to have license plate readers making this job so much easier, you don't have to go back after two hours and check the chalk and all that, do we need less officers? And then lastly, one more comment. When you were doing the comparison of public parking in various coastal cities, I was in Santa Monica yesterday, and it used to be 90 minutes free parking in Santa Monica in their public parking lots. I was there yesterday and it was raised to a whopping $1 for 90 minutes. So somehow on your survey, that was not accounted for. But Santa Monica has always done that to get customers to Third Street Promenade. So it's always been free and now it's a whopping dollar. I just think that you scare, like, I don't know if I'm going to stop in and run a quick errand when it's costing me, you know, $4 for a meter. It's kind of crazy. I'd probably walk, but if I had to drive, I might just not stop by Becker's or wherever I'm doing takeout because it's just not worth it.

So thank you. Okay. Thank you very much.

Next, we have Heather.

Hi. Forgive me if some of this was answered. I was trying to pay attention as much as I could, but I actually want to kind of piggyback off of what Lisa Middleman said. She made really great points. With it being so automated, so streamlined, so efficient now with these license plate numbers so they don't actually have to go and do that extra step of physically chalking and then checking the chalk mark two hours later, Why do we even need all of these, you know, officer positions? It seems like most of them could be eliminated, and they would have, like, you know, somebody obviously looking at the data of where, you know, this car is now in violation, and you'd, you know, run over there and give them a ticket. But I don't understand why we'd need even half of that information. meter made force anymore with this awesome new system. And the other thing that I wanted to know is back in the day, we would move our car sometimes a little, sometimes another stall or space over. But now, since it's based off the license plate number and not physically chalking the tire, would people not be allowed to park in the same lot after the amount of time has expired? And how would you know? Maybe you already discussed it. Maybe there is a specific reason. parking space number you have to put in but I don't know if that could also be addressed. I'm I don't think I'm very old, but I I can't remember which city it was but we had to go through so many hoops too. Hey the parking for the space the license it was just a lot and I can see this being a real struggle for elderly people. I can see it being a real struggle for somebody who maybe doesn't have a smartphone, although most people do. But I do see some cases where this would be difficult to access. And I only mention that because I had trouble to do all the steps necessary. And it sounds like Manhattan Beach's new parking thing is going to be very, what's the word? Like, you know, it sounds complicated to me just because there's a lot of things that you're doing. It makes it more streamlined on one end, but it does complicate things for others. I don't know. I mean, it might be considered even racist for certain demographics. I'm just saying we got to look at the whole thing and let's not overcomplicate systems is my comment about that. So thank you.

Okay, thank you, Heather.

No further requests on Zoom.

Sorry, no more?

No further.

Okay. I'll close public comments. I would like to ask a couple of questions from those calls, specifically in headcount. I mean, I kind of see that they're going to be collecting more.

Sure. I'll make an initial statement, but I don't know if the police department wants it to come down. The CSOs, the parking enforcement officers, there are 15. They're not all working at the same time. They work a few days a week. few hours for their normal shift, then there's another parking officer that comes in after that shift to be able to enforce parking. We don't enforce all the parking in the city. Most of our parking is enforced on a complaint basis. The only areas that are proactively enforced are the parking meter zones, and heavy parking demand zones, including a parking officer that's behind the street sweeper. And so 15 is not a lot when you're actually looking for enforcement.

I'll add to that that our CSOs are not just doing parking enforcement. That is just one part of their job.

That's right. You mentioned traffic control. Things like that. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

May I follow up on the question? I think the question was will there be some savings then with regard to that function of writing citations? Will there not be some cost efficiencies by virtue of the new system?

There can be cost efficiencies during the operation. That extra time would be reassigned to doing different tasks.

And I think there was also a subsequent question, if I could ask, with regard to the new system and its capability with regard to reading license plates and whether cars could move. Sure. How is it actually going to work?

Yeah, think of it instead of a parking space, it's a parking zone. So, say, for instance, the role of parking along that street frontage is a zone. And so if you've used up all your two hours, you can't park within the same zone for a little while before you can come back. But you can always park in a different zone and start another parking session.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, colleagues, discussion.

I had just a follow-up question, Mr. Mayor.

Hold on, sorry.

No, it's okay. I just saw it. That's fine. So it sounds like, and I think it's always good to question, you know, will we see cost savings? Could there be reductions in force in some way because of it? But also, it sounds like we'll have more of an ability to capture costs folks who are currently maybe abusing a system or currently moving their car or trying to, this will allow us to actually realize more in terms of capturing those folks who are violating their system. their parking meter. I don't know, Mr. Mayor, how you want to go through the suggestions. I was wondering if it might be easier to start with the violations portion of it, or I don't know, however you want to handle it. I mean, there's a few different things here to discuss. And there's been a lot of great questions brought up. And I think it's our job to discuss, well, maybe we don't want to do yearly increases, but maybe we do want to do this increase. I would hope we could have a full discussion on that. And for me, at least, it's a little more cut and dried with the violations.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I appreciate Director Brad Howard saying, hey, you know, do we need to give a break to the people who are breaking a rule or a law? And it was really great to hear that, in fact, like 16% only are residents. And of the 8%, 16. I thought 16%. One-sixth. One-sixth. Yeah. Yeah, and 8% as a whole. Got it.

And Eric, I just want to confirm one thing. The system is designed to take cash, right, to take coins and bills?

Oh, yeah, with regard to the other question that came up, the new system will be able to take a payment by phone, by text, and if you call in.

You'd have to call, but it wouldn't be cash.

If you have a parking kiosk or the parking payment system, you can pay cash there. Okay, great.

I'm sure of that. That's a good suggestion. I agree with that on the citations to take a look at that. Who wants to start?

Oh, Walt, sorry. I really think, I mean, it's interesting to me that Hermosa Beach just went up to, they were at 63 and they went up to 75? Was that what they went up to?

Yes, they went up to 75.

I was just verifying what they were currently. And I remember we were trying to, you know, we were sort of dipping our toe in the water. Because I think there was a higher recommendation at the time that we go to. So as far, you know, right now we're at 59. And, yeah, I say we increase it more. to 65. I think that's a very, very reasonable amount. But I'm not suggesting we do the automatic annual increase. I would first say, hey, I'd be in favor of going to 65 for the citation, and then let's talk about how we approach increasing. I see the logic in what the staff is proposing, but I also want to be respectful and listen to what my colleagues are saying. Next. If anyone agrees, I could make a motion or we could just discuss it.

I concur. I concur with the increase up to $65 with another $6. We don't need to go up to $75, although I'd like to better understand the logic that Hermosa Beach was applying. I did read the Daily Breeze article, which I forwarded to staff, which describes this increase. It's part of a larger increase. that the city has for capital improvements, but I think it's a reasonable request to go up to 65 based on the other city's survey. I agree we do not want to have an automatic increase. I recognize that by deferring an automatic increase, it means that there might be a larger increase later. I also understand that this is separate from our inflation rate, in our city, this has to do with larger budgetary needs. Nonetheless, let's imagine that there's a more severe recession. I think to have an automatic increase not only would be tone deaf, but also would not be recognizing economic circumstances. So as a result, I think this needs to come back to council, comes back to review, and then we can look at it in the context of what our overall budgetary needs are.

Okay. Um, So I agree with that. I did not like the idea of the automatic increase for those reasons. Nobody likes to be surprised. I mean, every time I get a ticket, I honestly don't remember what the baseline was before. So it's not going to be something that's going to really jump out on people. It's within the realm of other cities that are close to us. I think it's practical. I think it's also, you know, to get, we need to, you know, to roll over those parking spaces. We need to turn them over in order to give other people an opportunity to park. So I would support, you know, that motion. Mayor Portem.

Thank you. And I'm in agreement with all of you so far. I just have a question. I wonder if you would be open to, because every time we do this, it requires a lot of staff time. It requires a lot of our time. And I do think that we do have evolving needs. I mean, we can see, and I do understand, I'm sensitive to the fact that we're all feeling very squeezed right now. The inflation rate is not great, and so I'm cognizant of that. But I also think as much as we feel squeezed, I think city operations feel squeezed. So we're trying to do less with more. It's a balancing act, and so Just throwing it out there, if you would be open to dealing with this through the next two years with the $6 increase and then a $3 increase and then coming back to council at that time. But I'm okay with the $6. So if everyone wants to stop there, just trying to save us all time.

Council Member Shirley.

Thank you, Mayor. And I do concur. I like the idea of... of just increasing it to six, it's general fund dollars, and just be cautious in the sense of what's gonna, what could take place as far as the economics of what's going on all around us in the next year or two, and just have it just come back at a later date with no increases at this time. But if we're gonna bifurcate the motion, then I'd like I'd like to vote for the adjustment first.

Yeah. I was going to, that's what my motion's going to be.

Can I just first check with the city attorney? Does that sound like a good thing? We can go ahead and try for Kate.

Well, if you take a look at Resolution 26-0071, it's the draft resolution on the citation.

Yeah.

What I'd recommend is a, based on the discussion right now, adopting that resolution, but removing section five, which is the annual adjustment. And if you take a look at exhibit A, there was a mention of 65, but everyone else had $6 across the board. So take a look at exhibit A. Oh, that would go to 64? No, it's still...

No, go 65. Yeah, what I'm saying is there's others that go from 155 to 161.

If you take a look at exhibit A.

What he's referring to is all of the parking citations, they're at different rates depending on the severity of the violation. For example, I believe a parking in a handicapped space, I believe it's currently at 3.45 or 3.44, so it would adjust it to 3.50. So everything would adjust $6.

So the motion should use the word $6? $6, yes. Across the board. Okay, across the board. Thank you. So, okay.

So that would be my recommendation to adopt that resolution number 260071 with the deletion of section five.

Yeah. So I want to ask before I make the word, the motion, my intent, I really appreciate Mayor Pro Tem Tourne bringing up staff time. I do. But I also think that we're not talking about a parking management study going forward, and so that I would hope that it would be slightly less cumbersome. I think what I appreciate by the way we've approached this, though, We do have infrastructure needs. Obviously, we have parking lot three. We have parking lots two and four. We will always have those infrastructure needs. And what we're doing is responsible, and it's good stewardship of our facilities, and it's actually good fiscal stewardship as well. It's right-sizing what's happening, right? It would be silly to think we're in the bubble and, you know, it's Brigadoon and nothing bad ever happens or whatever. I don't actually think that's the point of Brigadoon, but anyway... So here's my motion for now. I move that we adopt resolution number 26-0071, removing section 5, which raises the parking citation $6 across the board.

And I've seconded it. So we have a motion to accept by Council Member Haworth and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Tarnay.

from the maker.

Hopefully.

So this is excluding the annual increase?

No, Section 5, yeah.

I just wanted to verbalize it. Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, call for the vote.

Motion passes 5-0. Okay. Okay.

I have a question. This is a question.

Is there the resolution 0071?

On the PowerPoint, it says recommendation is 00071. I've got 69, and I've got...

Can we confirm? It's toward the end.

Oh, there we go. Okay.

Thank you. We have to always be sure. Who knows? And then I had a question, or maybe it's a starting point. I don't know for the next, but I'll wait until you're ready.

Okay.

So as we talk about proposed variable parking rates, I do want to go back to the question I asked in the beginning I'm gonna actually be a little more specific. I showed the comparison between North Manhattan Beach, Beach Lots, and Downtown Street, but really the better comparison is between North Manhattan Beach on street and Downtown on street. And I think I need to hear from Eric again that why is it higher downtown? I don't understand that.

Okay, that's a very good question. Thank you, Council Member Holworth. The differential in parking rates on the street for the same season between downtown and North Manhattan Beach is based on the parking demand for each one of those zones. It's a higher parking utilization, parking, higher parking demand in downtown than there is in the North Manhattan Beach area.

Okay. I mean, thank you. There could be some changes coming to North Manhattan Beach with that. I guess I'm not going to make a grand statement now about I believe this or that, but I would like my colleagues to consider possibly keeping those two the same because I feel that that's a really strange, I mean, that's going to be hard to say that for me to pass if they're different. I get the logic of a variable parking rate. I get off-peak. I get beach lots versus on-street. But on-street in North Manhattan versus on-street in downtown, I think it needs to be similar. And it might be perception rather than pure math and reason, but that feels right to me. But I'm open.

Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, turn it.

So I live on the north side of town, and I would like to keep the lower rate for my friends and neighbors. No, I'm kidding. I think that you make a good case for that. I think it should be consistent, and I understand that there's less demand, but I do also anticipate that... that might change in the very near future. And the usage is pretty much the same. So I think for what we're doing, it should be apples to apples.

Okay. Council Member Sherrill.

I do concur with that, I guess. What figure would be most appropriate? Would it be the... Would it be the north off-peak street dollars for downtown? So it would be $2.50? Oh, no.

I still want to increase it.

Right, but if you look at slide, or if they put up slide 9.

Yeah, if you bring up slide 9, you can see that the downtown items number 9 and 10, the proposed parking rates are $4 during the peak season and $3.50 during the off-peak season. In North Manhattan Beach, it would be $3 for the peak season and $2.50 for the non-peak season. You could split the difference. I would split the difference. And say it's $3.50 for both during this peak season and $3 for the off-peak season. I like that.

I like that, too. That was my question for clarification. And then I guess just for conversation with my colleagues are – I'm not for the annual adjustments similar to what we do with the parking citations. Only one city does it. And if we're live by the survey, die by the survey, it's like we do the survey for a reason. So I don't know if I want to follow Newport Beach in similar annual increases.

Council Member Lessing.

I just wanted to follow up with a question for the traffic engineer one more time about the variable rates. Is the justification for variable rates that this is going to somehow impact behavior? I asked this earlier, but I'm just still struggling with this because back to the term that we talked about, Mayor, you and I, friction. I think for those that are just simply paying the meter for the costs, they're not even going to be sure when off-season and on-season begins. It's just going to be paying the amount. So I'm trying to understand what's the behavior we're trying to encourage, even though you've indicated, to steer vehicles to underutilized parking, but how are people really going to know? I'm struggling with... The whole justification for variable rates.

Understandable. Very understandable. The parking system, pay by app, pay by mobile phone, will show you different parking rates for different areas. You as a user will be able to pick that. the higher parking rate on the street may mean maybe I only want to stay an hour on the street and not two hours on the street. It's going to allow for that turnover for those high turnover businesses that want to have people through traffic or people coming in and shopping and other things like that. the driver behavior may not change if the person doesn't care about the cost.

Right.

Okay.

All right. So for my own comments to my colleagues, I welcome colleagues' input on this issue. I am receptive to variable rates, notwithstanding my asking this fundamental question, just because it gives us a tool. It gives us a tool to simply raise rates when supply will be reduced in the... peak season in the summer months where we're trying to encourage people to come up with other ways to get toward downtown. That was part of the reason why I supported the trial for the circuit for the WaveRider microtransit vehicle because We can anticipate having more vehicles than our roads can support, particularly with vehicles circling around looking for parking. So to the extent that we might want to influence behavior, having the variable rights tool, I think, is something that we want to have. I agree with Council Member Sherrillian and with our other colleagues with regard to to the citation rates. I do not want this on an automatic increase for precisely the reasons we previously discussed. Having an automatic increase, even though it involves staff time coming back to council, still we can anticipate a decline in the economy such that an increase in rates would be really harmful, harmful to businesses, harmful to attracting vehicles to our community. So I want to keep that as a tool that we have to review.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I largely agree with my fellow council member Lesser and I do see the value in the variable rates because I can see If I'm going to go to dinner and stay a little bit longer, I might want to park over at Metlox versus down closer to where the shops are, like down closer to the beach. So it would factor into my decision. And especially if I can see where the available parking spots are, it's worth it to me to save $5 to park a little bit further away for the dinner. two to three hours that I plan to stay so I do see the value in it and I but I also understand that some people are going to pay the rate no matter they won't even look at the rate but that isn't I think the overall purpose is the overall purpose is trying to just manage where people park those are who are more inclined to even just look at it and and I think It's been informative and important for us to look at this. We've done this traffic study so we can understand how people park and use the information from other cities as well. And I think as far as the parking rate, we're right in the middle. I think that's where we want to stay. I'm okay with not going with the annual adjustment. But overall, I think with the exception of the change to make it more consistent between north and downtown, I would be supportive. Thank you.

I also will be supportive of the variable rates. One question, though, with our... So I've pulled in, I've used up my two hours. I got alerted, I'm at my car, but I want to stay another 30 minutes. Do I literally have to move from that spot?

You would have to remove your car from the parking space as it is today because you've used up your time and you have to vacate the parking space after your maximum time. In this case, you're just moving a little bit farther down the street into a different zone.

Yeah, okay, great. Thank you. And also, I'm not in favor of the automatic increases. I think we just need to keep an eye on them, so...

I have a motion, I think.

Yeah.

I was going to ask, you were just going to ask the city attorney, weren't you?

Yeah, just what you wanted to see.

Because I have here, so it's two, there's two resolutions, right? Hold on. It's, oh gosh, there's three. 686970, good God almighty. How do we do this? Because I think we're all in agreement, we don't want to do the annual increase, which that would be, Removing section four from 26-070. Yeah, how do we make this motion? How do I make this motion?

That's 68. So I can make a suggestion.

Please do.

So all three of the resolutions, 0068, 69, and 70, are pretty much the same changes.

Mm-hmm.

And you can direct the city clerk to make the corresponding changes in all three resolutions. And I think the three provisions are no automatic increase, that the variable rates are okay. It sounds like that's the consensus. I don't know what the rate is for the downtown north end.

So my understanding, colleagues, is that we split the difference so that they both so the on street parking for both. North Manhattan and downtown during. During summer. would go from 250 to 350, so for both. And for off-peak would go from 250 to $3? Look at that. So that would be that. So I think the motion is to direct, to direct the clerk to make these changes. And does she have to come back and we vote on them again?

Or we can just... You don't have to do that. I think you can adopt all three resolutions as amended with the direction to the city clerk to make those changes in coordination with the traffic engineer.

So I move approval of the three resolutions. with the changes as discussed with no automatic annual increase, accepting the variable rate and making the rates in North Manhattan and downtown 350 during peak and $3 off peak and those are on street. That's the motion.

Look at us. A vote, please.

Nope.

Sorry. Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, great. Well, thank you, staff, for staying till midnight to figure that out.

I'd like to read the Constitution now.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary. Okay, next item is item number K, General Business. Seeing none, next item is item number L, Council Requests and Reports, including AB 1234. Reports? Colleagues? No? Let me see. So number 13, consideration of a request by Mayor Franklin and Council Member Lesser to discuss limiting City Council members' attendance at conferences to two per year. Is there a third?

Before anybody says anything on that, are we asking them to bring us options or just bring back just two? It's very specific. It says two.

I can help with that, Council Member Sherrillian. We're actually just going to take a look initially because we may have already cut it down to two when we were making the initial budget cuts. So we want to take a look at it and provide a summary of where we are right now without any additional cuts and then get further direction from the council there.

So you would have possibly have cut council's

Yes, we lowered the limits in each category based on prior year trends. And so that may have just automatically lowered it.

Interesting, okay.

Yeah, and aren't some required by whichever subcommittee we may be on or?

Potentially, so all of those, none of that would have been cut.

I think for me it was just specifically the number two. I'd like to, and if they've already done something, I'd like to see options because I think just, I can't say it, but.

So specifically then, so if there's a third vote, we'll come back with the report. Is there a third vote to come back with a report?

Okay. My request would be when staff comes back with this, I'd like to have some data. I'd like to have some data of prior travel by council over the last, you know, pick your period, obviously excluding the pandemic, but it would be helpful to have data on how this has been utilized in the past.

If I can just, whatever time you're going to pick, I would say do it. you know, at least prior council as well because I may skew that number for us. So meaning like if you can do a five-year period, at least get the prior council. Thank you.

And then do we want relative expenses too? I mean, some may be less expensive than others.

Well, of the conference itself, not like I bought pizza and you bought filet mignon.

And it varies from year to year as well because some conferences are local one year and not local the next, and then that always adds to the cost of travel.

See, that's a really good, because like, and I think, because some of them, and it could be part of the discussion, this is not an opinion, but part of the discussion could be, Oh, well, I don't go to any, so do my two get thrown into the pot? You know, stuff like that. I don't know.

I do go to some. I know.

Anyway, I have a future agenda item I'd like to discuss. Yes.

So item M, future agenda items.

Oh, sorry. I jumped ahead. So I thought it was great that, well, that Congressman Ted Lieu secured the money for us for cybersecurity. And as I have been... Experimenting with AI on my home computer and home device, I just think that maybe we need, I know we have policies on AI on city-owned devices, but I think we need to strengthen that. So as council members, like if we're using our city phone or city iPad that we're not using, you know, installing other AI that's not approved on it. So, like, I think I'd like to bring forward a discussion on that if anyone else would want to join.

I'll second that.

Or I could get Claude to second it. Get it? Is that right?

I mean, yeah.

Okay, we have two. City Manager Report, item N. Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Two things tonight. Number one, I wanted to say thank you and best wishes to our Interim Public Works Director, Joe DeFrancesco, who has been with us for a little over six months now and has just done a phenomenal job in the Public Works Department. It's going to be very hard for us all to say goodbye to him. He's here with us this evening, and I want to take that opportunity to say thank you. Okay, awesome. And second, just another reminder to council and our community that the September 1st meeting is canceled. It will be dark September 1st, and so we'll have our regular meetings as scheduled in August and the end of July, and then we will return for the second meeting in September.

Great. Thank you. City Attorney.

No report tonight.

Okay. Any informational items, P? And that should do it. So we are going to adjourn. Oops. Not to Congressman Liu's office. Let me get this. adjourned to a regular meeting on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at 5 p.m. in City Council Chambers. Thank you all.