Residents-only parking rules could change for neighborhoods in Costa Mesa

The Costa Mesa City Council will consider new rules for the city’s residents-only permit parking program Tuesday.

Requests to be in the program — which restricts parking on the public street to those with resident or guest permits — has “increased noticeably” in the last five years, according to city staff, who want to streamline the process.

To do so, the new regulations include:

•Making resident-only permit parking available only for single-family-zoned neighborhoods

•To establish permit parking, there needs to be at least 70% resident approval for it, not just a majority

•Each household gets two permits, with additional ones available if a need is documented. Currently, households are not limited to how many parking permits they receive. City Hall estimates 4,000 active permits have been issued among the 20 established permit-only areas

•Households each get 100 guest permits per year, with one-time requests of an additional 25 permits available for events

•Establishing a two-year permit expiration period ending in 2018. Currently, the permits do not expire

•Because applying for the permit system and the permits themselves are free now, the city could institute a “reasonable” permit fee system, whose revenue will fund the “resident only” signage and parking enforcement

Tuesday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 77 Fair Drive.