Funk Zone Parking Stall

Chalk one up for Anna Marie Gott, the most ubiquitous and effusively critical watchdog who birddogs the Santa Barbara City Council. Because of objections raised by Gott about lack of adequate public notice, the City Council opted to delay taking action on a proposal to initiate paid parking in three blocks of the downtown’s fabled Funk Zone. Gott had objected that nobody reading the council agenda could reasonably be expected to understand that paid parking was on the menu for possible council action. That, Gott argued via email, violated California’s open government laws. Even City Attorney Ariel Calonne, under whose skin Gott has frequently gotten, conceded hers was a reasonable objection.

Even so, the council heard a staff report and some comment from the public. The report concluded there’s more than enough parking to meet the demand in the Funk Zone, but just where people want to be — on the street in front of their favorite watering holes. By installing paid parking on three blocks — either by devices that read license plates or via smartphone apps — the thinking is that motorists would be induced to move their cars more and seek more broadly distributed spaces.

Much attention was spent on the public parking lot located by Cabrillo Boulevard and Garden Streets, which even on a busy night is only half full. Unlike most city lots, the first 75 minutes there are not free. That lot is governed by the Waterfront Department, an empire unto itself, and not subject to easy manipulation by the council. Any changes to control of that lot would likely have to pass muster with the Coastal Commission, always a daunting and time-consuming challenge.