Block the path of a street sweeper in Irvine and you could get a ticket under a new proposed law that would establish parking rules for street sweeping in areas throughout the city.

The City Council will consider the rules and possible $44 fee per citation at a meeting Tuesday, March 22.

Along several streets in Irvine, packed on-street parking has made it tough to clean, city officials said, and current methods of posting temporary “no parking” signs or sweeping by hand in those places “may not be as effective or efficient for staff.” High-density residential areas seem to be more impacted by demand for street parking, staffers noted in a report to council members.

The city currently has a street sweeping program that calls for most roads to be cleaned twice a month, but “we don’t have a program in place to ask residents to not park there,” said Jaimee Bourgeois, Irvine’s interim director of public works and transportation.

She said issues with cars blocking areas that need to be swept isn’t a new one, but “it’s definitely growing.”

“We’ve found other ways where we’ve tried to work around the parked cars, but it’s just not as effective,” she said. “So (the proposed law) is sort of taking our efforts to the next level so that we can truly get the streets cleaned.”

The law would allow enforcement of parking rules while the city’s streets are cleared of dirt and debris. The roads along which the regulations will be implemented will be determined by the city’s Transportation Commission.

Bourgeois said city staff would bring specific streets to the commission for consideration, that way impacted residents could have advanced notice and make comments.

If city leaders decide to move forward with the proposed law on Tuesday, the council would have to vote a second time at a subsequent meeting before it would take effect 30 days later.

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