Los Banos councilmembers seek to limit how many cars you can park at your own home.
The Los Banos City Council is looking into tightening the rules on where people are allowed to park their cars at their own homes, saying it would help "beautify" neighborhoods and eliminate fire hazards.
Council members said they were conflicted on how to keep people safe and have more attractive looking neighborhoods without infringing on people’s property rights and adding more rules that could be difficult to enforce.
This issue was raised by Councilmember Deborah Lewis last month and the council continued their discussion at last week’s council meeting. Lewis showed the council more than 15 photos she took of houses in town that don’t meet the city’s existing code, which prohibits people from parking on unpaved surfaces and caps the number of vehicle allowed to park in backyards at three.
“I’m not here tonight to try and take away anybody rights to do something, but I do want to see our neighborhoods improved and I think residents deserve to live in a neighborhood where they don’t have to worry about the value of their home whether their renting or whether they own,” Lewis told the council.
There isn’t a limitation on how many cars can be parked on front yard paved surfaces and the existing code says up to 70 percent of the property can be paved. People have been taking “full advantage” of that, said Stacy Souza Elms, community and economic development director for the city.
People are pouring concrete around their houses to expand their driveways for parking and “it’s making our town look ugly,” Mayor Mike Villalta said.
“The ordinance that we have now is weak,” Villalta said during the meeting. “It’s not what it should be in order to give code enforcement and police the power that they need to take care of this.”
Los Banos Police Chief Gary Brizzee told the council the current code could use some improvements. The council could consider changing the amount of space that is allowed to be paved in people’s front yards, Brizzee said, because people do pave their yards and pile cars on them.
“That will give us some tools to say ‘we value the appearance of your front yard and we don’t want it to be a parking lot for vehicles,’” Brizzee said, but “we’re not going to be able and go out and address every single issue every single time because there’s just not enough capacity to do that.”
Three people in the audience voiced their support for stricter enforcements and said their neighborhoods don’t look “beautiful” and the streets they live on are starting to look like parking lots.
Councilmember Scott Silveira said he’s not aware of a way to enforce the “beautification” of a neighborhood and it’s not the role of government to define what that means or looks like. Toughening the rules “by nature would beautify a neighborhood, but I don’t know how to regulate that,” he said. "It seems like a bit much."
The “biggest” issue is there isn’t enough code enforcement staff, Silveira said.
“I always caution against making more rules that we can't enforce,” he said. “I can't see myself supporting something that doesn't address the need for more code enforcement officers. Let's address real issue.”
The council unanimously voted to have city staffers come up with a new policy that’s more specific on how many cars can be parked in front and backyards and how much of the surface can be paved.
Some of the photos Lewis took had houses with half a dozen or more cars on their property which doesn’t always look appealing, Lewis said, and can bring up safety concerns when it comes to flammable liquids.
“How are we to know what’s in a vehicle in someone's backyard?” Lewis said.
When cars are parked in the same spot for long periods of time it creates weeds and debris which has been an issue in the past, Los Banos Fire Chief Mason Hurley said.
“It could always be a hazard because of the accumulation of tire and oils and fuel,” he said in a phone interview. “Too many vehicles on a property could cause problems. It's a maintenance issue which falls back on code enforcement” and house fires do happen because of lack of maintenance or the accumulation of debris.
Councilmember Daronica Johnson-Santos brought up the issue that there are commuters in Los Banos and instances where multiple people in one house all have cars.
Silveira agreed adding it takes multiple families or people living in one home to afford rent or a mortgage sometimes and “are we telling those folks that they're not welcome here? That’s not the kind of message I wanted to send.”
Monica Velez: 209-385-2486, @monicavelez21
This story was originally published March 28, 2018 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Los Banos councilmembers seek to limit how many cars you can park at your own home.."