City Policy: It's in the Money

This sequence of charts show the operating revenue from three neighboring beach cities, Dana Point, Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. The chart for Laguna shows the city draws more revenue from parking and vehicle fines than from general sales and occupancy tax (bed tax). A city budget that relies on vehicle taxes and parking fees as revenue means the city has no incentive to remove automobiles and traffic . Adopting Complete Street Policy to reduce the mode share of automobiles would threaten this revenue, and thus new policy remains a fantasy in Laguna Beach.  Until Laguna beach city government abandons its oppressive revenue model based on vehicle fines and fees in favour of a pro-business model to generate legitimate revenue, traffic congestion will not improve. We will likely see more business closures despite more vehicle fines to make ends meet, there are better ways to generate revenue in Laguna Beach. (28 April 2011 presentation CSTF)