Commentary: Requiring permit parking for Island Avenue residents is unfair

My family have been property owners on Island Avenue since my grandfather built our home in the early 1900s. Now Newport Beach is again revisiting the issue of parking permits on Island Avenue and other streets.

The majority of our neighbors disagreed strongly when this issue was originally discussed, so now even though the city has reduced the price of the permit, it seems that it still doesn’t understand our position.

We oppose parking permits, period.

Why should the residents from Seventh Street to Adams Street pay to park on city streets when the rest of the peninsula and city does not? If the rule applies to the entire city, that is one thing, but to force us to buy permits to park from 4 p.m. until 9 a.m. on our streets is absurd.

Our home was built between 1908 and 1912, and we have no garage, which makes it even more difficult, particularly when the residents of Bay Island use our street for parking and not their garages because they don’t want to walk the extra block. We can’t even get traffic control or the police to come in a reasonable time when construction trucks and personnel are blocking our cars so we can’t get out.

We have had to put up with the new park congestion, the new marina congestion, the constant construction on Bay Island, the Bay Island bridge construction, and now the proposed new hotel in place of the old City Hall. Traffic and parking have always been difficult during summer, and now we will add more cars and congestion because of these so-called improvements.

If the city is going to insist that residents pay to park on the public streets, then not only should the entire peninsula have to do so, so should the entire city of Newport Beach, including Newport Coast and Corona del Mar.

Is the city seeking additional revenue? If so, having the entire city pay for parking permits should help, but we who live in the proposed boundary should not be the only people affected.

It seems that the city has forgotten about the peninsula, which is unfortunate because the peninsula is more or less what put Newport Beach on the map as a vacation spot.

ALLEN MAXFIELD lives in Newport Beach.