Before Friday’s announcement of the cancellation of the San Diego City Council’s Monday hearing on Balboa Park’s paid parking program, various compromise proposals were already circulating—from offering free parking one day per week to tiered systems for city versus county residents. The deal announced Friday by Mayor Todd Gloria and Council President Joe LaCava will make parking free for city residents in six large Balboa Park lots and end parking enforcement at 6 PM instead of 8 PM. But city residents will still be required to pay to park in the five lots closest to Balboa Park’s most popular attractions. 

We need to be clear: while well-intentioned, these are not solutions, and the San Diego Natural History Museum urges the Council to see them for what they are—half-measures that fail to address the fundamental damage this policy has inflicted on our institutions and the community we serve. 

Proposals such as offering free parking one or more days per week are also non-starters. One day of free parking does not solve a seven-day problem. Offering free parking on Sundays while maintaining barriers the other six days of the week does nothing to address the accessibility crisis facing our community. Families who cannot afford parking fees on Saturday are not helped by Sunday access. School groups visiting on weekdays still face the same financial burden. This is not a solution—it is a symbolic gesture that perpetuates inequality of access to public cultural resources. 

Similarly, proposals to offer free parking exclusively to City of San Diego residents—while requiring County residents to pay—create troubling new problems while failing to resolve existing ones. This still blocks County residents who’ve supported Balboa Park for generations, maintains the enforcement nightmare slowing entry, and suggests that your right to access San Diego’s cultural treasures depends on which side of a city line you live on.   

Balboa Park serves the entire region—our membership, our school groups, our donors, and our visitors come from throughout the county. Any fee structure—regardless of how it’s tiered or geographically limited—maintains the core problem: charging people to access their own public park and cultural institutions. 

Rather than the City cutting its own spending, it is effectively placing that burden onto nonprofit cultural institutions. The impact is not theoretical—we are experiencing attendance declines of 25 to 40 percent and corresponding drops in earned revenue. These losses threaten the financial sustainability of institutions that have served this community for generations—resulting in inevitable layoffs and major gaps in exhibitions and educational programs. The City has effectively outsourced its financial challenges to the very organizations that serve its residents and enhance San Diego’s cultural reputation. 

Make no mistake: anything short of full repeal sends a clear and damaging message. It tells our community that the City’s revenue needs matter more than the long-term financial health and sustainability of the arts and cultural organizations that define Balboa Park. It tells families that their access to culture is negotiable. It tells the nonprofit sector that we are expected to absorb the consequences of municipal budget decisions. 

The arts and cultural institutions in Balboa Park are not simply tenants or revenue centers. We are stewards of public trust, educators of children, keepers of shared history, and essential components of what makes San Diego a world-class city. We are also your partners—partners who have invested decades and hundreds of millions of dollars in creating and maintaining institutions that serve every resident. 

The City Council has a clear choice before them: repeal this failed policy entirely, or at minimum, pause its implementation until a truly strategic plan can be developed—one that doesn’t sacrifice accessibility, doesn’t decimate cultural institutions, and doesn’t balance the City’s budget on the backs of the nonprofit organizations that make Balboa Park a world-class destination. 

The damage is real, it is measurable, and it is accelerating. We stand ready to work with the City Council on genuine solutions for Balboa Park’s funding—but those solutions cannot come at the expense of the very institutions that give the park its cultural value and educational purpose. 

Council members: repeal the paid parking program or pause it immediately while we develop a better path forward together. Half-measures will only prolong the harm.