Petition to repeal parking fees at Balboa Park cleared to gather signatures

The petition seeking to put the parking fees in Balboa Park up for a vote in November 2026 is now officially allowed to seek signatures.

Supporters of the “Balboa Park Free Parking Restoration Act” marked the occasion on Saturday with a gathering at the Organ Pavillion in the park. The drive is led by Richard Bailey, a candidate for the District 2 City Council seat.

The petition was first announced in early March but could not immediately gather signatures under the city charter. Bailey’s group is seeking at least 82,000 verified signatures for the repeal initiative, at which point it would generate a ballot item for the November 2026 election.

During the event Bailey, who served as mayor of Coronado from 2016 to 2024 and moved to Point Loma in 2025, also mentioned that the petition can force the matter back before the city council prior to becoming eligible for the ballot.

“If we collect just 24,000 signatures over the next three months, we can go ahead and submit that to the city of San Diego and they are required for their charter to go ahead and rehear this item,” he said.

In a statement later, he said that the initiative had collected more than 1,000 signatures as part of the event on top of more than 10,000 signatures that had already been gathered through its website repealthefees.com. His group can now begin setting up locations around the city to collect more signatures.

Not long after the Balboa parking fees were introduced in January (prompting an immediate public backlash) the council began considering exempting San Diego residents from having to pay.

But Mayor Todd Gloria instead moved to expand the number of free lots for verified residents to seven of the 12 in the park; he also allowed free parking in the area to begin at 6pm, cutting fee enforcement by two hours. In doing so, Gloria forestalled the possibility of the council suspending the fees altogether, which would have required a veto-proof majority vote. Gloria’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Bailey’s website promoting the Balboa Park petition also targets the trash collection fees that were implemented in a 2022 ballot measure that won the vote. Those fees are currently estimated at around $50 a month, and have also generated criticism from residents.