Torrance Claims Street Sweeping Program is Losing Money; Citizen Group Rebuts Flawed City Data
This evening the City Council is set to hear an updated report on the Optimized Street Sweeping Program. A hallmark of that Program was the introduction of increased enforcement of no parking during street sweeping hours through signs and fines. Newly released figures in the Staff Report indicate that despite a substantial increase in revenues due to the citations that the Program is actually costing the City approximately $220K a year to operate.
A group of concerned citizens who call themselves the “No Signs, No Fines Committee” have prepared an alternate Staff Report which asserts much of the data provided by the City is flawed.
That alternate Staff Report can be found here.
One of the members of the “No Signs, No Fines Committee” also provided a statement which was included as supplemental material to the agenda item on the street sweeping program. That statement is as follows:
In all the 35 years that I’ve lived in Torrance, the City has swept nearly all streets in the city once a week. In 2014 the City began requiring that cars be moved or be ticketed on street sweeping day, and called the program Optimized Street Sweeping. Today’s Staff report says that after 4 years of OSS, Torrance is losing money on every ticket they write.
Should the Optimized Street Sweeping program be continued?
- The goal of the grant Torrance wrote which initiated the OSS Program was to clean our waterways that lead into Machado Lake.
- To accomplish that, the Water Quality Control Board mandated the installation of full capture screens for our drains. That has been done.
- The requirement to move cars on street sweeping day or pay a fine was added by the City itself, and never was required.
- The Staff claimed a 50% greater pickup would be possible with OSS.
- Torrance’s own data shows they are not picking up any more tonnage now than they did before OSS.
- The sweepers are cleaning the same streets with the same frequency as they did before 2014.
- The Staff report today says that administration of the ticketing component of this program is costing more than it’s bringing in.
Therefore, there is no reason to continue a program that is not mandated, does not improve the environment and is losing money.
I ask the Council and Mayor to halt the ticketing component of the OSS immediately. You can leave the signs up, just don’t ticket people.
Do not raise ticket prices in order to ‘pay for’ the costs of a useless program! If you’re not ready to drop the ticketing component permanently, then institute a 6 month moratorium on ticketing, and observe the results.
At the very least, codify a method of allowing neighbors to opt out of the ticketing component on their streets. Residents pay for street sweeping through taxes; many people do not wish to pay again via ticketing.
The issue is that they are not even sweeping. they do a drive by.
Yep, at 20 mph!
or even faster! and most times no water brung used!
We live on a cul-de-sac and they basically do a donut inthe middle every week, completely missing the gutters and edges of the street where the debri accumulates.
Union workers
Highly paid, over-compensated union workers
LOLOL.
Maybe a half a dozen times since they require us to move our cars for 3 hours, they have sweep in front of our house…. I know, I’m home and retired…… before all that, I cleaned in front 2-3 times a week….. you know the 6 leaves in the gutter!
The answer is to only sweep the street if a visual of the area shows tge street needs sweeping, if not needed, ” pass”, and go to the next request for a sweep….
On my street I take my walk and knock on the doors of my neighbors and remind them to move their cars. The city isn’t going to make a dime in my neighborhood!!
you are a good neighbor
or maybe they will contract out..and the private vendor will contribute to a future Congressional run when Maxine retires….and sweeten the pot by contributing with bill board signs too…
I am upset at myself for parking during sweeping period. Seeing that the street sweeper has already come by (the wet tracks were still visible), I decided to park on the street under the shade. I was home the whole time afterwards and did not hear any possible second sweeping (not sure how many times it passes by). People, please don’t do the same mistake I did !