As the San Diego City Council prepares to discuss Balboa Park’s paid parking program on Monday, various compromise proposals are already circulating — from offering free parking one day per week to tiered systems for city versus county residents.
We need to be clear: While well-intentioned, these are not solutions, and the San Diego Natural History Museum urges the council to see them for what they are — half-measures that fail to address the fundamental damage this policy has inflicted on our institutions and the community we serve.
Proposals such as offering free parking one or more days per week are nonstarters. One day of free parking does not solve a seven-day problem. Offering free parking on Sundays while maintaining barriers the other six days of the week does nothing to address the accessibility crisis facing our community. Families who cannot afford parking fees on Saturday are not helped by Sunday access. School groups visiting on weekdays still face the same financial burden. This is not a solution — it is a symbolic gesture that perpetuates inequality of access to public cultural resources.
Similarly, proposals to offer free parking exclusively to city of San Diego residents — while requiring county residents to pay — create troubling new problems while failing to resolve existing ones. This approach still erects a financial barrier for the hundreds of thousands of San Diego County residents who have supported Balboa Park institutions for generations. It does nothing to reduce the enforcement and verification nightmare that is slowing entry and creating confusion. And most fundamentally, it sends a problematic message that access to San Diego’s cultural institutions should be determined by which side of a municipal boundary line you live on.
Balboa Park serves the entire region — our membership, our school groups, our donors and our visitors come from throughout the county. Any fee structure — regardless of how it’s tiered or geographically limited — maintains the core problem: charging people to access their own public park and cultural institutions.
Rather than the city cutting its own spending, it is effectively placing that burden onto nonprofit cultural institutions. The impact is not theoretical — we are experiencing attendance declines of 25% to 40% and corresponding drops in earned revenue. These losses threaten the financial sustainability of institutions that have served this community for generations — resulting in inevitable layoffs and major gaps in exhibitions and educational programs. The city has effectively outsourced its financial challenges to the very organizations that serve its residents and enhance San Diego’s cultural reputation.
Make no mistake: Anything short of full repeal sends a clear and damaging message. It tells our community that the city’s revenue needs matter more than the long-term financial health and sustainability of the arts and cultural organizations that define Balboa Park. It tells families that their access to culture is negotiable. It tells the nonprofit sector that we are expected to absorb the consequences of municipal budget decisions.
The arts and cultural institutions in Balboa Park are not simply tenants or revenue centers. We are stewards of public trust, educators of children, keepers of shared history and essential components of what makes San Diego a world-class city. We are also your partners — partners who have invested decades and hundreds of millions of dollars in creating and maintaining institutions that serve every resident.
City Council members have a clear choice before them: Repeal this failed policy entirely, or at a minimum, pause its implementation until a truly strategic plan can be developed — one that doesn’t sacrifice accessibility, doesn’t decimate cultural institutions and doesn’t balance the city’s budget on the backs of the nonprofit organizations that make Balboa Park a world-class destination.
The damage is real, it is measurable and it is accelerating. We stand ready to work with the City Council on genuine solutions for Balboa Park’s funding — but those solutions cannot come at the expense of the very institutions that give the park its cultural value and educational purpose.
Council members: repeal the paid parking program or pause it immediately while we develop a better path forward together. Half-measures will only prolong the harm.
Gradwohl is president and CEO of the San Diego Natural History Museum.