Fountain Valley outsources parking enforcement efforts

Fountain Valley has made plans to outsource its parking enforcement efforts, with city officials seeing an opportunity to enhance responses to “more pressing” issues.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an agreement to have parking enforcement handled by Universal Protection Service for an initial three-year period at a cost of $519,182, with options for two additional one-year extensions.

Police Sgt. Brian Mosher said there has been an increase in demand for such services. Contributing factors have included parking congestion associated with community events and complaints regarding recreational vehicles. Staffing shortages have led to inconsistent street sweeping enforcement, he said.

Fountain Valley has five police service officers, but Mosher said there is a high turnover rate for the part-time positions, resulting in more time spent on recruitment and training.

“These staffing challenges have resulted in sub-optimal enforcement and the inability for us to meet the expectations of the community,” Mosher said. “Residents and businesses deserve reliable, consistent and proactive parking enforcement services. To achieve this, it is necessary to enhance the capacity through a trusted private partner.”

The agreement will supply two full-time patrol officers dedicated to parking enforcement. They will each have a fully equipped vehicle and a mobile reporting device.

“This will lead to a significant increase in enforcement activity, particularly for street sweeping violations, which constitute approximately 75% of our total parking citations annually,” Mosher said. “It will improve resource allocation. Outsourcing the parking enforcement will allow the city to relocate existing police service officers to address more pressing quality-of-life issues, citizen complaints and first-responder priorities.”

City staffers believe the program should pay for itself and project $320,000 in annual revenue due to an uptick in parking tickets.

Councilman Glenn Grandis asked about the estimated incremental revenue through increased enforcement. Mosher said the projection was conservative, noting that while the police service officers had been positioned to work Wednesday through Friday, the city still collected an average of about $35,000 per month from citation issuance.

As for the shift in direction, Councilman Patrick Harper wondered if outsourcing parking enforcement was becoming the norm in Orange County.

“Most agencies are moving this route because of hiring and sustainability of a part-time employee,” said Mosher, who added that Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana are all using the same vendor. “Huntington Beach ran into the same issue. … I find that a lot of agencies are going to be going to this.”