Aaron Vernallis and his neighbors gathered at his home one evening last week to share their concerns and ongoing frustrations over the suspension of the permit-only parking. The good news was that they all walked to his house; because had they needed to drive and park they would have been out of luck. When I arrived, aside from the spot I grabbed when someone pulled out, there were no empty parking spots anywhere in sight. We met at 6pm.
Vernallis, a homeowner on Alameda, just a couple houses down from 4th Street and the Navy base exit, has become the spokesperson for his neighborhood. Residents in the area say that their parking options have been negatively impacted due to the trial currently in process which removed the decal permit parking program. They say that their neighborhood street parking is being filled by NAS North Island employees. Additionally, an advertisement-wrapped van is being used as a parked billboard which occupies two spots. Someone rotates the van by replacing it with one of two other vehicles every 72 hours so as to abide by the prohibition of parking a vehicle over 72 hours. When parking the cars, he parks far enough back from the stop sign and red zone so that the van will fit back in the space, but not far enough back for another vehicle to box him out of the space. This was never a problem for the residents when there were parking permits and signage to indicate permitted parking only.
The parking permit issue was discussed and voted on at the city council meeting on October 3, 2017. There had been no notifications sent out to the residents and therefore no residents showed up to have their voices heard. The decal permit parking suspension was voted in and the permit-only parking signs were taken down. This was to be a one-year trial. In the meantime, there are empty sign poles along the streets. The residents are pleading for reinstatement
and had the opportunity to speak at a council meeting on March 6, 2018.
For that council meeting, Vernallis prepared a very thorough presentation, but due to time restrictions he was not allowed to finish. He left questions with the council members and also addressed the questions in emails to them.
Ultimately the final vote was not the result that Vernallis and the other residents had hoped for. In an email he sent to supporters, he wrote that, “The council voted 3-5 against ending the suspension of the parking permit study. They said they don’t understand how there can’t be any parking available, especially when their study shows otherwise. We’ve gotten through to them that this is an issue, but they don’t understand that we need the permits back to fix it. Bill Sandke, Carrie Downey and most of all Mike Donovan did not understand the lack of access to our homes and that this is affecting our quality of life. They voted down bringing back the signs and pushed for a future meeting on June 1st to discuss it…
“Please watch the meeting on the city council site to see for yourself, but there is very little sympathy for our cause. One of the council members even suggested we just park our cars in our garages, even after I explained we have half lot homes in this area, with no driveways and no garage space. We have two aircraft carriers returning in the next few months and it’s only going to get worse.”
He added, “Remember, this isn’t an ‘Us versus the Navy issue’… this is a ‘why did the city council take away a permit that made living next to one of the largest Navy bases in the country very easy, and the city council’s actions resulted in making our lives hard in the process.’”
Vernallis has taken to sending nightly reports to the city council to keep them abreast of the parking difficulties. Council member Bill Sandke paid the area a visit last week and sent Aaron an email with his observation that there was parking available. Albeit his visit was at 1:30 in the afternoon when the residents were at work and the pictures he sent mostly showed red curbs, which of course have no vehicles. Sandke promised to stay engaged and has done so with Vernallis.
The residents are hoping that with more research and more attention the city council will agree that while there is no perfect answer, the situation went from working to unsatisfactory with the loss of parking permits. They are hoping the council will suspend the study and reinstate the parking permits and replace the signage. The studies which were shown to Vernallis were lacking data collection details that would greatly impact the studies.
