The View From Harbor Street
By David Buckingham
Updated City Seal!
Thanks for the excellent community participation in the process as we considered updating our City Seal. Nearly 400 folks voted, two-thirds online and a third in person. That is almost 10 percent of the number of households and businesses in Morro Bay — a statistically strong response.
While fewer than one in 10 of us expressed a desire to keep the old seal, over 90% voted to refresh the seal — updating the key themes of “Rock, harbor, fishing and environment.”
The version shown here won easily with 38.8% of the vote, some 15% higher than the closest competitor. The City Council selected the new seal at its Jan. 27 meeting. Updating the City Seal was a bit easier, perhaps, than updating our parking.
Is there a Parking Problem?
Does Morro Bay have a parking problem? Well, yes and no. It depends on whom you ask, on how you live, and on how you assess if there is a problem — anecdote or science.
Our most recent scientific parking management study found that Morro Bay does not have a “parking problem.” The study concludes that “overall parking supplies are adequate” in both the Embarcadero and Old Town business districts, while noting that “instances of critical demand occur only in a very few, isolated blocks, and only for very short duration time periods (for only about a 1-hour interval).”
Recent staff assessments of this study have come to a similar conclusion — most blocks in the Old Town area have adequate parking. And, if you are able and willing to walk 1/2 to two blocks, parking is rarely a problem.
As part of the Local Economic Action Plan (LEAP) process, one Main Street business owner recently observed in an email that locals “come downtown to one business only and want to park in front of it. When they can’t, they assume we have a parking problem.”
Other residents, though, certainly feel that there is a big parking problem. We’ve received a number of comments recently that the pilot parklet on Main Street should be removed because some feel like there is a parking shortage in that area. Other comments express appropriate concern for seniors, but many local seniors are very mobile and love to walk the Embarcadero and bike our wonderful bike paths. So, what to do?
This year the City will conduct (and with public input and Council approval begin to implement portions of) a holistic review of parking in Morro Bay. There are many opportunities from little things like better signs directing visitors to the areas with plenty of parking, to changing parallel parking on some of our wide streets to angle-in parking — potentially doubling the number of spaces for 90-degree parking.
Other ideas include identifying areas where new parking lots might be established, installing paid parking in certain areas, and increasing enforcement of parking time limits, both of which increase customer turnover in business districts.
One final piece of good news, the City recently gained control of the large gravel parking lot behind the wall next to the power plant and intends to convert that, at least temporarily, to a free parking lot to serve the Embarcadero area.
As with the City Seal and all things, we value public input and look forward to your ideas about parking in Morro Bay.
Do you have ideas about how to improve parking? Please let us know. You can send an email to the City Manager at: or the Public Works Director at: .
We are looking for innovative and creative ways to make our City more pedestrian and bike friendly, while improving the resident and visitor experience and remaining accessible to all.
David Buckingham is the city manager in Morro Bay. The View From Harbor Street is a regular feature of The Bay News.
