Orange Alters Its Parking-Ban Program

ORANGE — A mandatory citywide program prohibiting parking during street-sweeping hours will be implemented this summer.

The City Council voted 4 to 1 last week to approve a program that will ban parking for a four-hour period each week to allow more efficient street cleaning.

The program will be implemented in stages and will take as long as three years and about $129,000 to complete, Bernie Dennis, city traffic engineer, said.

Currently, parking bans during street sweeping are offered on a block-by-block basis. If 55% of a block’s residents support a ban, then the city will post no-parking signs for the cleaning hours.

Most residents have chosen not to participate in the optional program, Dennis said, leaving the city with clogged drains and dirty streets.

At the council meeting, one resident spoke against a mandatory no-parking program, arguing that it would be almost impossible to find other places to park on sweeping days because the streets are already crowded.

Councilwoman Joanne Coontz encouraged the council to support the program.

“I think it’s a health issue. If you could see what comes out of those gutters, you would see it’s necessary,” Coontz said.

Councilman William G. Steiner, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said he feared that the public had not received sufficient notification of the parking changes.

In other action last week, the council voted unanimously to pursue the annexation of five parcels of North Tustin. The annexation would include four islands of unincorporated territory north of Fairhaven Avenue and south of Esplanade Avenue and one near Crawford Canyon Road and Chapman Avenue.

The city has contacted the approximately 500 residents living in those five parcels, encouraging them to support the annexation.

The Local Agency Formation Commission will have a public hearing on the incorporation of North Tustin at 2 p.m. April 3 in the Board of Supervisors Hearing Room in Santa Ana.