After San Francisco temporarily relaxed street sweeping enforcement amid the coronavirus stay home order, city officials on Friday announced the city will resume issuing parking tickets for street sweeping violations.
Mayor London Breed initially announced back in March that the San Francisco Municipal Agency would not be issuing tickets for street sweeping in order to allow residents to follow the stay home order and ensure protection against COVID-19. Despite this, residents were still being encouraged to move their cars if possible.
Nearly three months since that announcement, as some businesses have been allowed to reopen, enforcement will resume as crews with the city's Department of Public Works have reported seeing as many as 18,000 cars blocking their street cleaning efforts.
In response, street sweeping enforcement will resume starting on Monday, June 15. However, parking tickets connected to street sweeping violations can be waived for residents who are still being affected by COVID-19, city officials said.
"At the beginning of the Stay Home Order we wanted to ensure that people who were sick were able to isolate themselves without needing to leave to move their vehicles," Breed said. "Now as we're reopening, we've reached the point where we must resume parking enforcement so that we can clean our streets. We'll of course continue waiving tickets for people who face issues related to COVID-19."
SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin said, "As more businesses open up and more residents return to work, now is the right time to ensure our streets are clean and ready to support economic activity."
Acting Public Works Director Alaric Degrafinried said, "We certainly understand the needed pause on street cleaning enforcement during the early months of shelter in place, but there have been consequences. Our mechanical sweeping crews have not been able to do as thorough a job cleaning, resulting in more litter and leaves on the streets."
