The cost of a ‘crown jewel’

Alright, maybe you’ve figured this out before me.

How are you going to handle paid parking in Balboa Park?

As our Tessa Balc outlined for us this week, the city in January is rolling out a complicated-to-me parking pass program in San Diego’s “crown jewel.”

(The scare quotes are because we built a highway through it, a flight path over it and ran up a $500 million tab in deferred maintenance within it, at least raising the question of how sincerely we believe in the claim.)

In any case, I would imagine I use the park more than the average resident. I’ve got young kids and live nearby in Golden Hill. We’re Balboa Park’s core audience.

And I can’t figure out for the life of me if I should buy a yearly pass, chance it with a daily rate when I drive in while trying to carpool and bike there more often, or concoct some sort of algorithm that determines my seasonal visiting patterns to tell me if I should buy quarterly or monthly passes some of the time.

Probably the easiest move is to bite the bullet and grab an annual pass — or two, I guess, for both family cars? It’s easy to talk myself out of dropping $300 on day one of this new system.

Help me out. What are y’all doing? Email us at news@timesofsandiego.com and spell out your thought process, even if it’s mostly “pretending this isn’t happening as long as possible.”

One more thing: Have you seen this incredible free event we’re throwing with our partners at Zocalo Public Square next month? And have you taken the time to RSVP? OK, good, just checking.