The City of Goleta hosted a community meeting to discuss residential parking permits and noise ordinances for Halloween weekend in Isla Vista Thursday evening at Goleta City Hall.
Halloween attracts many visitors to I.V., impacting street parking and noise level. At the meeting, community members discussed possible solutions to these issues, mainly temporary noise ordinance and parking permits.
UCSB Police Department Lieutenant Mark Signa said the influx of vehicles during Halloween weekend has affected locals in past years.
“The parking has been a difficult thing for people who come out into the area and park in Goleta and take up valuable space that the residents are using,” Signa said.
Signa said the City of Goleta and UCSB have collaborated to ensure that parking is available for I.V. residents and the students through a temporary permit system.
“The Goleta area’s restricted the parking to those who have permits, and the permits are given to the residents in the area,” Signa said. “Each resident, from Hollister Avenue to Southern Limit and from Cannon Green Drive to Storke Road, get two permits and can request more at the Neighborhood Service Department.”
Signa said the City of Goleta will implement a parking restriction from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, with restrictions on parts of Del Playa, Sabado Tarde, Trigo, Camino Del Sur, Camino Pescadero and El Embarcadero starting at 5 p.m. on Friday.
According to Signa, UCSB will offer discounted campus parking permits for those who wish to purchase one in preparation for Halloween weekend.
“What they’ve done to mitigate the problem with students living on Del Playa is that they’ve offered the students an opportunity to buy night weekend permits at a reduced rate, so they actually get a permit they can use for the rest of the year,” Signa said.
Isla Vista Foot Patrol Lieutenant Rob Plastino said a noise ordinance will help ensure parties to not reach unmanageable levels.
“There have been studies done that show that the sooner you shut down the music the sooner the party is over,” Plastino said. “As you close that gap between the times you allow it to the time you shut it down, you lessen the amount of drunken violence and fights that break out.”
According to Signa, the parking permit program and noise ordinance are intended to make Halloween a local event for I.V. residents.
“What this has been very successful at doing is instead of creating large, open parties with two, three or five hundred people showing up and music blasting, it’s now smaller contained parties, local parties, where students are having parties with just their friends, smaller groups, hence less alcohol, less problems,” Signa said. “By keeping it local it stays contained.”
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Butch Arnoldi said many people who visit I.V. for Halloween do not respect the local community.
“Unfortunately people that are not from the area come up here and think that’s it free game for all kinds of assaults, physical assaults and sexual assaults,” Arnoldi said. “This is not the old west, people can’t come here from out of town and brutalize our people.”
Signa said approximately 200 law enforcement officials will patrol I.V. during Halloween weekend.
“Law enforcement for Isla Vista is going to consist of Santa Barbara Sheriff’s department, UCSB police department and we’re each going to have different areas that we’re going to be patrolling,” Signa said.
Goleta Neighborhood Services and Public Safety Director Vytautas “Vyto” Adomaitis said the City of Goleta developed a parking permit program with community input and has received “overwhelming support.”
“Part of the feedback we got from the residents was, in fact, to do something about having permit parking in the area to help keep all of the outside visitors who come into the neighborhood and flood the area with vehicles,” Adomaitis said.
Adomaitis said the City of Goleta will keep working to decrease the impact of Halloween weekend in I.V.
“We’ll be reviewing these measures periodically and methodically like we do after every event,” Adomaitis said. “We find out what went wrong, what needs to be adjusted.”
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