San Diego city crews will begin tackling a backlog of infrastructure fixes today, following a City Council decision this week to use otherwise allocated funds for street light, sidewalk and other repairs.
The $1.8 million collected in the city's Community Parking District program will go toward making the repairs in the communities from which the funds were gathered — Downtown, Uptown, Mid-City and Pacific Beach.
In June, the council approved a sweeping parking reform package intended to improve efficiency and transparency. However, much of the money collected in parking districts was tied up in other costs, and only around 30% could be expended on infrastructure repairs.
Monday's council action freed up the money to complete some badly needed repairs by waiving the CPD programs for the next two fiscal years.
"There's no shortage of work that needs to get done in these parking districts, and we can maximize the impact of this meter revenue by using city crews to make repairs that San Diegans are asking for," said Bethany Bezak, director of the city's transportation department. "Street lights are a perfect example. There are over 1,200 outages in Downtown right now that have been requested by residents and businesses, and this council action will unlock the resources we need to eliminate that backlog."
More than $700,000 of the freed-up cash will head towards the Downtown CPD, $734,000 for Uptown, $325,000 for Mid-City and $50,000 for Pacific Beach.
An internal review conducted by the transportation department this year found several issues with how funds have been managed and documented. In fiscal year 2025 the share of revenues available for CPD organizations was $3.3 million, but CPDs were only able to expend around $1 million.
In April 2025, the San Diego County Grand Jury released a report calling on the city to disband the CPDs, noting the CPDs do not meet the transparency requirements of their agreements with the city and "spend a significant percentage of allotted revenues on administrative costs and create unnecessary layers of bureaucracy," among other findings.
Starting Wednesday, crews will begin the backlogged repairs in parking district neighborhoods and will address infrastructure projects in other areas in the coming weeks, according to a city statement.
