{"id":428223,"date":"2026-08-09T17:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T17:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428223\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T17:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T17:14:09","slug":"city-to-introduce-ordinance-that-would-prohibit-paid-beach-parking-for-10-years-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428223\/","title":{"rendered":"City to introduce ordinance that would prohibit paid beach parking for 10 years \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although the city of San Diego once considered implementing paid parking at local beaches, a newly proposed ordinance would prohibit that from happening for at least a decade.<\/p>\n

At the Aug. 6 La Jolla Community Planning Association meeting, San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava and San Diego City Councilman Raul Campillo\u2019s deputy chief of staff Vic Vettiyil told the group that the draft ordinance would take future plans to charge for beach parking off the table. The two offices worked together to draft it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis (ordinance) would embed in our municipal code a prohibition that the city could not charge for parking at any of the parking lots that serve our beaches and bays \u2026 from Kellogg Park down to Ocean Beach, and everything around Mission Bay,\u201d LaCava said. The ordinance only addresses parking lots, and makes no mention of changes to street parking near the beach. If adopted, the ordinance would sunset in 2036, at which time the sitting mayor and City Council could revisit it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ordinance is expected to go before the City Council Rules Committee on Aug. 26 before proceeding to City Council.<\/p>\n

Its drafting marks a reversal from the city\u2019s earlier proposal \u2014 which LaCava supported \u2014 to implement paid parking as a means to generate revenue amidst ongoing budget challenges. At the time, the beachside lot in La Jolla Shores was not being considered as a location to start charging for parking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my September budget memo, I came down very hard about (implementing) paid parking in all of the beach and bay parking lots because I knew exactly what our fiscal year 2027 budget conversation was going to look like,\u201d LaCava explained.<\/p>\n

\"CouncilCouncil President Joe LaCava speaks during a budget review committee meeting at City Hall on Friday, June 5, 2026. (Kristian Carreon \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

Before paid beach parking could be implemented, however, the city moved to charging for parking in Balboa Park. Public backlash was swift and strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat created quite a hubbub,\u201d LaCava said. \u201cIt was rolled out poorly and executed poorly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposal to charge for parking in Balboa Park was ultimately canceled<\/a> and will no longer be in effect as of January 2027.<\/p>\n

As a result, LaCava explained, \u201cIt became very clear that people had become exhausted with being charged fees for the things they had gotten so used to enjoying for free. Given these economic times, to have the beaches, bays and Balboa Park (be a place) that \u2026 any family can go despite their income and have a very good time, is what is special about living in San Diego.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of charging for parking at the beach coincided with discussions over how the city would close a $118 million budget deficit in FY27. LaCava has explained that methods for filling the gap is either to make deeper cuts to existing department budgets or explore new sources of revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fiscal year 2026, we did deeper cuts, and we did do some revenue but a lot of that either didn\u2019t pan out or was overturned,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fiscal year 2027, we did it all in cuts. Those are the choices we are making \u2026 if we cannot identify new revenue that they would support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although the city of San Diego once considered implementing paid parking at local beaches, a newly proposed ordinance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,930,5184,6804,6953,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-428223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-la-jolla","tag-la-jolla-light","tag-la-jolla-light-news","tag-la-jolla-shores","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}