By Paul Krueger
If our elected officials were as creative with cutting expenses as they’ve been picking our pockets, we’d have a balanced budget with little, if any, need for additional revenue.
But our Mayor and City Council won’t make the fiscally responsible decision to cut the city’s workforce — especially its bloated middle-management ranks — through buy-outs, early retirements, furloughs, and lay-offs.
What we get instead is an endless array of new fees and taxes, which place the biggest burden on those least able to absorb these costs.
Doubling parking meter fees, expanding the hours, days, and locations where those fees are imposed, charging for parking in and around Balboa Park, and issuing thousands of $100-plus “daylighting” citations for motorists who unknowingly park within 20 feet of an intersection are just the start.
Every day brings a new and very unwelcome scheme that lightens our pocketbook.
If you don’t carry a bagful of quarters to feed the meters (yes, it takes 10 coins to park for an hour), you’ll now pay an additional credit card “transaction fee” for on-street parking.
Downtown, North Park, and Mid-City residents will be charged $150 to obtain a permit that allows them to avoid paying the new Sunday meter fees near their homes and apartments. This regressive fee most harms those who don’t have a garage or off-street parking, and who still have to pay the $2.50 per hour meter fee in the early evenings and on Saturdays.
And — surprise, surprise — there’s a $5 “account verification fee” to get the necessary permit for reduced-rate parking for city residents in Balboa Park.
Mayor Gloria’s team tries to deflect responsibility for these “revenue enhancement measures” by saying it’s only fair that we “cover merchant processing costs” or assuring us that “account verification fees are vendor-based, not city-imposed.”
But those fees should be factored into the cost of administering these new tax collections, not added to the fee structure.
By the City’s logic, we should also pay a surcharge for the wages paid to the additional employees who issue the parking citations, the paper used to write those citations, the gas consumed by their vehicles, etc., etc.
Worse is the Mayor’s brazen and relentless effort to confuse us about how the Balboa Park parking revenue will be spent, and the unwillingness — or intellectual inability — of the media to challenge his misleading statements.
The Mayor has repeatedly either inferred or outright stated that the parking revenue will be used to make much-needed improvements in the Park’s buildings, bathrooms, and public spaces. The city’s parking portal claims “parking revenues are invested into Balboa Park” and that “revenue funds operations, maintenance and improvements to the park.”
Before Councilmember Marti von Wilpert voted to approve the new parking fees, she specifically asked city staff if that money would provide a specific revenue stream for Balboa Park projects. The answer was an unqualified “yes.” But that response was misleading at best.
As explained in my September 8, 2025, Rag story (aptly titled “My Frustrating Search for a Simple Answer About Paid Parking in Balboa Park”), all that projected revenue will find its way to the city’s general fund and will be used to help eliminate (or at least reduce) the city’s sizable 2026 budget deficit.
The city’s Independent Budget Analyst also confirmed that any additional funding for Balboa Park over and above what’s already budgeted in the general fund will be realized only if parking revenues exceed that general fund amount (which it clearly will not, this year, or in the foreseeable future).
In sum, the cash generated by parking fees is just one more revenue source needed to backfill the budget deficit. If more cuts to city services and infrastructure are still required to balance the budget, Balboa Park will not be insulated from those cuts.
Short of a ballot measure to repeal the new parking fees or a special election to recall the mayor (and perhaps those council members who approved those fees), there’s nothing we can do to reverse these hugely unpopular fees.
But we can insist on honesty, accuracy, transparency, and accountability, and donate our time and money to candidates who pledge to support those basic tenets of good government.
Thanks, Paul, for making perfectly clear that Balboa Park will receive no additional funds from parking revenues unless those parking revenues exceed what is already allocated to the park in the General Fund.
Staff’s response to Councilmember Von Wilpert indicating that the parking funds would provide a specific revenue stream for Balboa Park projects is indeed misleading because for every parking fee $ applied to Balboa Park projects, a general fund $ will be removed from the Balboa Park line item and spent elsewhere, so there is no net gain to enhance Balboa Park unless those parking revenues exceed the General Fund dollars budgeted to Balboa Park. Taxpayers need to understand this. Balboa Park won’t get any extra money unless profits generated by the Balboa Parking fees (after the costs of implementing the program are deducted) are greater than the amount that the city’s General Fund already allocates to maintain Balboa Park.
If the Balboa Parking Scheme doesn’t produce more net (after costs) funds than the General Fund assigns to Balboa Park, the Park will get only the amount the General Fund allocates – not the General Fund allocation plus Parking fees. ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THAT THE FEES GENERATED BY PARKING AT BALBOA PARK WILL GO TOWARD MAINTAINING THE PARK IN ADDITION TO GENERAL FUND DOLLARS ALLOCATED FOR BALBOA PARK HAS BEEN MISLED.
Thx for confirming these facts and adding this new information!
Thank you so much for doing the research!
The usual switcheroo, spending all the “new” revenue on Balboa Park, while defunding the Park from the General Fund in an equivalent amount. We see this over and over in Govt money grab initiatives, that are always sold on the basis of every dime going to schools, or transit, or whatever. Thanks for your efforts in confirming that, sadly, this is business as usual.
Thank you both, Paul and Danna, for unraveling the city’s talking points.
Thank you folks watching the actions and inactions of our mayor and council.
We must consider repealing the parking fees and other hairbrain ideas the Mayor and Council come up with.
I’m curious to know if there is any way to revisit/re-work the unfunded pension benefits enjoyed by city employees that we taxpayers are on the hook for? I would like to see exactly how much of our taxes are going to fund these benefits each year, rather than to public services/infrastructure.
2026 City of SD Draft Budget:
https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/pb_v1cbo.pdf
Another interesting article:
https://inewsource.org/2025/06/05/san-diego-clean-sd-program-position-budget/
Anyone who thinks bringing in more water will help when you’re bailing out a boat will also believe bringing in more tax revenue will correct a budget shortfall. We need to be teaching math and economics in school again.
Want to repeal the parking fees?
Add your name to the list at https://repealthefees.com/.
They need 21K entries to go forward.
Yup better get on it. 3 more tax initiatives by the city and county coming this fall to your ballot box. These people want your wallet. All the public works, unions, and MTS looking to cash in.
Lawson-Remer backtracking on one of the voter tax hikes.
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2026/01/08/county-halts-request-for-lobbyists-to-lay-groundwork-for-tax-hikes/
As always, the devil is in the details. Had the city been more transparent and forthcoming in advance about the parking fees, it would have had an opportunity to receive feedback prior to implementation. Full disclosure of the way it would work would’ve have reduced the shock effect and the backlash.
My experience as an out-of-towner was this on Monday: First-off, there were no signs anywhere about the fees. I parked in Village lot with no idea of how much it would cost. I prefer to pay online, so I scanned the QR code and attempted to use the website. It stated that although the fee was $2.50 an hour, the minimum charge is four hours plus a processing fee. I then went to kiosk to see if there was a way to pay by the hour. It also said the minimum is $10, so I paid for four hours, which was $10.35.
Four hours later, I realized that I need an extra hour of parking. So I went to a meter, and attempted to add another hour for $2.50. It displayed the hourly charge of $2.50, but when I paid it charged me $10.35. So I paid a total of $20.70 for 5 hours.
To say that the fee is $2.50 an hour is misleading. It was actually $10.00 for 4 hours, and that is the minimum charge. Had there been proper signage posted prominently, I would have chosen to park in the free or cheaper lots.
The people of San Diego elected the mayor and council who allowed this to happen. So they have only themselves to blame if they accept this fiasco and chose to do nothing about it.
Feedback?! LOL. This city ignores, deflects, dismisses, feedback. Not all have elected this bunch of keystone cops. Parking nearby and taking an Uber sounds cheaper.
Great article asking all the right questions and demanding answers. The new leadership at the City and County has not brought any new ideas except ways to extort money from the public.
Couple things:
San Diego is about the most hostile place for walkers/bikers I have ever lived in. No one “unkowingly” parks up on a corner. Daylighted intersections are a standard part of parking rules everywhere in America. I first heard of the practice when a friend got a ticket in highschool in the late 90s (east coast).
You don’t park up on an intersection because that endangers pedestrians, and if you get a ticket, good. You endangered someone’s life cause you were too lazy to find a real spot and walk a little further to your destination, or so dumb you forgot a basic rule of parking/lack common sense enough to figure it out for yourself.
I *will say* that this should not be a budget item because one hopes that the general obliviousness and selfishness of california drivers is finite – eventually, with enough consistent enforcement of a rule that places the lives of pedestrians over the momentary convenience of drivers, this practice will die out and the money raised will accordingly tail off.
But sorry guys, learn the laws of driving. And you could all probably use the walk.
Secondly, the city should enforce its own parking laws. In the old days of coin op meters city employees installed and maintained the meters, collected and counted up the money. Now an endless host of middlemen have inserted themselves with garbage apps terrible service and no accountability. Oh and also parking fees are higher than what they otherwise would have been under a public system because a profit margin for shareholders needs to be added to the basic cost of the system.
The city has a right to dictate its vendor’s fee structure as cost of doing business with a very large city. There are damn few contracts as large as San Diego and for Gloria to punt responsibility, well, the guy has always been a weasel. City has no responsibility to help them “recoup costs”. If their company is mismanaged to a degree they can’t turn a profit they can simply run at a loss until such time as a more competent company buys them at bankruptcy auction. No one is guaranteed profit and if Gloria feels like doing so let it come out of his pocket.