Restricting parking on your street will cost you

Daily News columnist Kerry Cavanaugh explains, in response to a reader wondering why he has to pay to park in front of his own Van Nuys house, that them's the rules when your neighbors ask the city to create a preferential parking district.

Once the district is approved, it costs you $34 a year for each permit to park on your own street. Getting there, though, can take two years — and right now there's backlog of 30-40 requested districts and a moratorium on new applications. What it takes:

Here's how it works: A group of residents, a homeowners association, neighborhood council or City Council member submits a letter to DOT asking for a district. DOT investigates to see if there is another solution to the parking problem. If not, two-thirds of residents on each block in the district need to sign a petition. Then DOT does a parking study, including counting the number of occupied spots and writing down the license plate numbers of every car on the street for a DMV search.

If 75 percent of the curbside spots are occupied and more than 25 percent of the cars are registered outside the neighborhood, the area qualifies for preferential parking.

But, it's not done yet. The city holds a public hearing and, finally, if enough residents support the district, DOT will take it to the City Council for final approval. Once approved, the agency installs dozens of no parking signs in the area.

Those $60 tickets for parking without a permit don't pay for the program. They go into the city's general coffers.