DBIA Launches Petition Opposing Return of Pay Parking
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 @ 1:35 PM
DBIA President Rod Holmes with a bundle of signed petition papers – photo 250News
Prince George, B.C.- The Downtown Business Improvement Association (DBIA) has launched a petition it hopes will help convince Prince George City Hall that returning pay parking to the downtown is a bad move.
In March of last year, Council approved bringing back a pay parking system, and is just days away from officially awarding the contract for a new system. Yesterday, Council approved making the hourly rate for on street parking $1 dollar, and agreed to boost the off street rates as well.
DBIA President Rod Holmes says the return to pay parking is a result of some who abused the system which allowed for free parking for two hours. Instead of punishing the abusers, it is the businesses that will be hurt “When pay parking left downtown, I know Northern Hardware reported a 17% increase in business, I can only assume the reverse is going to happen when pay parking returns.”
Holmes says they did some research and presented a proposal to the City that would not only save the City money in the purchase of equipment and operating costs, but would make money for the City. “The whole objective is to get the people who are abusing the on street parking, off the street” says Holmes and he doesn’t understand why the City isn’t willing to consider their proposal.
Holmes says the DBIA proposal would see the DBIA take control of both the on street and off street parking, would cost about 40-60 thousand dollars which is a fraction of the money the City is planning to spend ( more than a million for equipment and installation) and the monitoring would be better. “We are trying to get them to at least consult with us” says Holmes.
The petition already has more than 1100 names on it. It is available at many of the downtown businesses, and at the DBIA office on second Avenue. Holmes says you don’t have to be a resident of Prince George to sign it, as the DBIA believes the parking issue impacts anyone who wants to do business in the core “If you are coming into the downtown to do business, you are a stakeholder in this issue” says Holmes. The petition can also be accessed by clicking here,
The City however says it doesn’t have the legislated authority to hand over the responsibility for parking or bylaw enforcement to an Association. While there had been a Parking Commission in the past, that is a different scenario as it falls under Council’s wing, and must follow the same rules and regulations as a committee. But we aren’t talking about re-establishing a parking commission, rather the transfer of authority to an Association, and that, according to the Community Charter, is not possible.
If that is the case, Holmes says there is still the issue of the City’s inability to collect the associated fine. “If the fines were being collected, the City would be in the black without having to return to pay parking.” Holmes says violators know their fine will not likely be collected so they are not going to pay the fine. “So one of the proposals we put forth was to actually collect the outstanding fine, to make it a real fine.” He says the DBIA would take a more aggressive role, with a warning for the first offence, after a certain number of tickets, have the vehicle towed.
“If they( the City) would just enforce the existing rules and adapt a bylaw or two, the current system would pay for itself without having to bring pay parking back.”
Comments
I will be going downtown specifically to sign this petition as I believe that City Hall should be looking at the efficiency of their operations, as well as the wages paid, before upping rates.
The City will never go for this. They are not interested in finding a better way of doing things–they are only interested in finding a way to charge more.
The problem is that to spend over a million dollars over the life the meters (5 years?) with the hopes to getting an extra revenue of $80,000 per year, just doesn’t make sense.
This is just like the district heating system, the only way to make money is if you disregard the costs…
Should be free parking for all. Yes, I understand there will be some that would exploit this. However I for one, am not comfortable leaving my vehicle downtown for extended periods of time anyhow.
At the same time you should have people signing a petition against this mayor and council. Finally paying for parking to sign the petition would be worth it
âWe are trying to get them to at least consult with usâ says Holmes.
Consultation and arriving at a mutually agreeable consensus requires two parties willing to negotiate in good faith, setting aside ego issues.
“The City however says it doesnât have the legislated authority to hand over the responsibility for parking or bylaw enforcement to an Association”
Okay, so they say they cannot do that. However, they can create a bylaw requiring business/property owners to free sidewalks adjacent to their buildings of ice and snow.
Do we believe any of this?
From the Community Charter
Municipal commissions
143 (1) A council may establish and appoint a commission to do one or more of the following:
(a) operate services;
(b) undertake operation and enforcement in relation to the council’s exercise of its authority to regulate, prohibit and impose requirements;
(c) manage property and licences held by the municipality.
===================================
So, they can establish a commission, call it the XYZ Parking Commission, appoint members of the DBIA to it as well as a few people from the general public, and away you go.
Where is the problem??????
Aw heck … let the city put pay parking back! They know what’s best because they’ve obviously put some thought into it.
Then again, I might be biased as I own a business outside the downtown, and this pay parking move can only hurt my competition located there.
$1 per hour?!? Gotta love it.
And if they don’t care about the letters XYZ, the use the letters DBIA …. ;-)
This petition is also available at the downtown branch of the Public Library. Please sign!
The City should change the parking bylaw making it an infraction to park a vehicle on a City street if there are two or more unpaid and undisputed parking tickets for that vehicle. That way the City (or their ‘commission’) can tow just for having unpaid tickets.
I’ll bet most people would pay up to avoid being towed. Would that solve the collection issue?
I think if might be a little late for this. According to the final core review document, they’re in the final states of evaluating the RFP’s. This has been going on for a year at least it seems. I think the time for petitioning is long past.
Geez, it’s just like the DBIA to jump in on the eleventh hour with some ill placed idea that a petition will solve the problem. Why can’t these folks just realize that without the added income from the meters, it’s going to effect there home owners taxes in an upward direction. The removal of the meters was an experiment and it failed drastically, project over back to what was a functioning revenue stream, move on people it’s the “City of Prince George”, not the village, the pit stop, the town….THE CITY. Let’s start acting like it and move on with being a city.
Gus, Prince George had a parking commission with a big financial bank balance, this was phased out so the city could play with the cash how they saw fit, research before the keyboard.
The City does not need to accept any proposal, especially if new and meaningful information is available.
I think your idea, Icicle would work as long as a time period is identified which leaves time to pay the ticket. In other words, it has not been paid within the time limit or has not been disputed.
So that sounds to me it would have to be a month or more. I forget what the limits are.
“research before the keyboard.”
I do not have to research Professional. I arrived here in 1973 and was involved with City matters almost from the time I stepped off the plane. I lived through the Parking Commission Days. Was on the Planning Committee as well for many years. I know exactly why it was disbanded.
The transparency which used to be there in those days and the conversations with the public or at least appointed people from the public has eroded over several decades. Hopefully the group we have in there now will be the worst and the last.
The City is run by the bureaucrats more and more. No one on Council is strong enough to stand up against them. They are pulling the wool over the eyes of Councillors.
I just made sure people understood that the Charter does not stop Council from giving over the authority to a Commission That notion is totally BS.
Next up! Pay parking at all the malls. 36.00 per month park whereever you like parking pass coming to a city near you!
Professional. I had occasion to request the occupancy status of the downtown parkades as well as on-street parking and other off street parking for a study that was being conducted by a consultant to determine the availability of parking.
Do you realize that I never received that information, even though it was in the City’s interest to provide it. I suspect they do not have good information even though they have a GIS system which should be able to provide me with the information of how many parking spaces there are from any given property within a walking distance of say 500 metres.
Not that anyone in Prince George ever walks that far to a parked car …. so better make it 100 meters …. LOL
“Geez, it’s just like the DBIA to jump in on the eleventh hour with some ill placed idea”
The idea surfaced in November of last year ….. hardly what I call the 11th hour.
The City and the DBIA simply do not get along, no matter which groups are in charge of both organizations.
Hey!! Let’s have a conversation about that …. I know a green mayor who would love to join in on that one.
“Not that anyone in Prince George ever walks that far to a parked car …. so better make it 100 meters …. LOL”
Sadly, that’s true. People in PG would drive around the block on 3rd Avenue six times trying to find a spot and then get all mad when none was available, so they just head up to Walmart and park in the far corner of the parking lot and make the 5 minute walk to the front doors (exaggerating for comedic purposes). Meanwhile, there were 7 empty spots on 4th, LOL.
The far corner of the Wal-Mart parking lot is complete entertainment. I get to pretend I’m Rick Mercer “Talkin’ to ‘Mericans”.
Gus:”The idea surfaced in November of last year ….. hardly what I call the 11th hour.”
I remember it too and I was at that time already wondering how in the heck the city has been trying to resuscitate the downtown (with taxpayers’ bucks) and then at the same time insisting to bring back pay parking which will choke off the new life which was a result of removing and scrapping the parking meters.
Methinks it doesn’t make any sense.
The politicians of this fair city, need to get their hands out of the tax payers pocket and start looking a real cost savings. There are too many people from the Mayor’s office down at the trough. How many employees do we have working for the City of Prince George making $100,000 plus? Is it really necessary to have that many people in that wage scale? What are they doing to earn those big salaries? Are we getting a full day’s work out of them? Could there duties be doubled up?
Who cares whose idea it was or the hour, this should be the cause that unites enough people to say F$$off council. This is bad policy ,bad economics, totally counterproductive. etc…There can be a solution without this BS.
The lost revenue from parking was about 100k/year last I heard. It ain’t a cash cow folks. invest(borrow) a million plus..piss off almost everyone on all sides. throw the downtown under the bus…..WTF?
They have pissed off individual Citizens, their own work force, entire neighbourhoods, whole community groups and non profit organizations, other politicians and now downtown businesses….all in les than half their term, these guys are GOOD! AH, and they still cannot control their spending on big ticket items and the giant core review? Well, what a joke, all they got so far is to hock public services (or try) and increase taxes and user fees.
A real train wreck. Unfortunately it is not just a bad movie , it is really happening in my community…
Downtown “free” parking cost the city $81K/year to operate. Going to spend say a minimum $1M in capital cost to install new system. 12.34 years, assuming no operating costs, to repay the capital investment vs funding the losses. A quick look around the Internet suggests full performance operating life of a parking meter is 10 years. So you need to anticipate replacing before paying off the initial investment vs. subsidizing free parking. Really? Subsidize free parking seems like the more cost effective option for a city trying to save money.
If they just collected on the outstanding parking tickets, they wouldn’t have to subsidize anything and it would solve the parking problem.
It’s a small bylaw change (paperwork) to collect and doesn’t cost anything, but a bit of time to do. I don’t understand why council won’t consider this.
It costs too much to collect Icicle. Law is law, I have a right to dispute any ticket as maybe I wasn’t driving the car at the time of the ticket. Why do you think they dropped photo radar?
Read the above posts, NoWay. There’s a way to collect that doesn’t cost anything.
Maybe if enough people sign the petition, it will become a “hot button” issue, which will force the Mayor and Council into another “in-camera” voting session without revealing who voted for or against a downtown parking fee?
If it works that way for the Pine Valley Golf Course decision, why not apply the not so transparent decision making process to all other controversial issues?
This should have been a no-brainer, if city hall wants to attract business investment downtown, DON’T charge for parking, or at least allow 2 hours free parking!
I clicked yes to the poll for arguements sake. Truthfully, paid parking won’t stop me from going down town. I have never paid a parking ticket, nor will I. It is an admission of guilt and unless it is provable that I personally parked at the time and place to incure the ticket I will not pay it. Collection may come after you, but it will never show on your credit report.
The downtown is rediculous, the paid parking lots should also be free after 5:00pm, they are all blood well empty anyway!
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