Ticket Sweeps Irk Residents on Dirty Streets

Claiming that residents are being unfairly penalized, Los Angeles City Council President Pat Russell on Friday proposed that the city not issue parking citations in neighborhoods where, because of mechanical problems with the city’s street-sweeping machines, streets are not being cleaned on schedule

Russell, whose 6th Council District includes parts of South-Central Los Angeles, where city crews have been unable to clean an average of 30% of the residential routes that are supposed to be swept weekly, said the problem with the sweeper program has confused and angered the public.

“In recent weeks, my office has received a steady flow of complaints from constituents who have ignored the street-sweeping signs and been ticketed,” Russell said. “They’re very upset about the ticketing--and for good reason.

“It clearly makes no sense to penalize people for obstructing street sweepers that will never show up.”

Westwood to Watts

She said the areas mostly affected by the problems have been the Crenshaw district, Westwood, Watts, Venice, Mar Vista, Palms and Westchester.

A Pomona distributor who sold the city 25 new sweepers last year acknowledged this week that the machines have had problems with their heat-exchange systems that cause them to overheat. He said the manufacturer has pledged to overhaul the defective sweepers beginning in February.

The city has also experienced problems with 54 other sweepers recently purchased from another company, and repairs on them are now being made.

City maintenance officials say 84 sweepers need to operate each day to meet the city’s street-cleaning schedule. Because of the repeated breakdowns, however, the average number of sweepers available fell into the low 60s several weeks ago, but has since risen to between 71 and 79.

Citations Targeted

At Friday’s City Council meeting, Russell introduced a motion directing the Department of Transportation to stop issuing citations on streets that have posted parking restrictions but are not being swept. Her motion was referred to the council’s Transportation and Traffic Committee for a hearing Dec. 19.

There was some indication, however, that it would be difficult to implement Russell’s plan.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who himself has asked for an investigation into problems with the street-sweeping program, said the crews that enforce parking restrictions are not told which streets will be swept on a given day.

“The problem . . . is that the transportation ticket writers don’t know what streets the sweepers are going to be on,” he said. “If they can know, then obviously we should suspend handing out tickets when there is not going to be any street sweeping.”

Officials from both the Department of Transportation and the Street Maintenance Bureau were reluctant to discuss Russell’s proposal without first studying it, but they confirmed that parking enforcement officers generally do not know which streets will be swept.