Quick Take
If the planning commission approves the permit at its meeting Thursday night, the City of Santa Cruz will have more than three months to address any appeals that may be filed between Thursday and May 11, when the existing permit is set to expire.
The City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission is set to decide Thursday whether to renew a permit that would allow the city to continue its controversial oversized vehicle ordinance indefinitely.
The California Coastal Commission originally approved a coastal development permit last May, removing one of the final hurdles to the city’s ban on large vehicles parking overnight on public streets. The ban went into effect Dec. 4 as a one-year pilot project lasting through December 2024. However, when the Coastal Commission approved the permit last May, it did so only for one year, ending this May.
Thursday night’s vote is largely meant to help speed up the permit-renewal process and allow the city to manage what it expects will be more opposition to the ordinance before the coastal development permit expires May 11.
Senior planner Timothy Maier said the city chose to start the renewal process three months early to have enough time to get through any potential appeals. He said renewing the permit will allow the city to continue operating its safe parking program and make minor modifications to the ordinance in the future if needed, but does not require the city to make any immediate changes.
City staff have the authority to renew coastal development permits on behalf of the Coastal Commission, but they can also pass that responsibility to the planning commission. In a report this week, city staff said they were choosing to leave the decision up to the planning commission because of the ordinance’s complexity and broad geographic scope.
The ordinance prohibits vehicles more than 20 feet long or 7 feet wide and 8 feet high from parking on city streets between midnight and 5 a.m. Several local agencies are involved in enforcing the ban and supporting unhoused residents, including the Santa Cruz Police Department and the Santa Cruz Free Guide, an organization that runs a 24/7 safe parking program at the National Guard Armory on behalf of the city.
Staff said they also turned the decision on renewing the permit over to the planning commission because they expected the decision would be appealed, given the ordinance’s complicated history. Originally passed by the city council in 2021, the ordinance spent much of the next two years in appeals to the planning commission, city council and the Coastal Commission. The city previously scrapped a ban on oversized vehicles from parking within 100 feet of intersections in the coastal zone after the Coastal Commission objected.
If city staff had opted to renew the permit themselves this year, any appeals would have had to first go to the planning commission, whose decision could then be appealed — again — to the city council. In this case, if the planning commission votes to renew the permit Thursday, any appeals would go directly to the city council or the Coastal Commission.
Several advocates, community members and unhoused residents have raised concerns about the overnight parking ban, city staff acknowledged in their report.
Some have said they are worried that many of the oversized vehicles that people live in are old and have mechanical issues, potentially affecting people’s ability to get to and from the city’s overnight safe parking lots. The report says that there has been only one documented instance of a breakdown preventing someone from moving their vehicle, and that law enforcement did not cite the person after confirming that repairs were scheduled.
Another common worry is that paying for gas to drive to and from safe parking lots might be financially difficult. City staff said that there are parking spaces within a mile of the designated safe parking lots with free parking where people will not be ticketed, and that members of the Westside Neighbors resident group have offered to contribute to fuel cards to help with the costs of having to move the vehicles every day. Santa Cruz Neighbors is collecting the funds.
The staff report also mentions other issues the city is working on addressing. Those include wastewater disposal, accommodating people with disabilities to be able to use the safe parking program and possible changes to a program that allows housed residents to apply for permits to park their own oversized vehicles on the street overnight near their homes.
The city says that residents living in oversized vehicles can dispose of wastewater at the Union 76 gas station at 1500 Soquel Dr., and staff is working on a feasibility analysis of other locations where the city can administer a dumping station. It also says that those who would like to participate in the safe parking program but cannot due to disability can request accommodation through the city’s website.
Some residents who own smaller oversized vehicles but do not live in them expressed concern that they might be ticketed if they park their vehicles on the street overnight because they don’t have access to off-street parking at their homes. Should the new coastal permit be approved, the city said it could introduce a daily permit program that would allow residents without off-street parking to park their vehicles on the street near their home address without getting cited.
Maier said the planning commission’s decision will be the final approval, unless it is appealed to the Santa Cruz City Council or directly to the Coastal Commission.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. Thursday at Santa Cruz City Hall.
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