ELORA – Centre Wellington council got bogged down in discussion on Dec. 15 about paid parking in downtown Elora, which comes into effect on Jan. 5.
The intent of the bylaw is for visitors to pay to park on certain streets in the core. Centre Wellington residents who register their licence plates with the township will be exempt.
But councillors only discovered while registering their own vehicles for exemptions that the exemption is limited to two vehicles per address.
That means if there are four vehicles in a household, only two can register. The others would have to pay to park in the paid parking zones.
“Many of our residents want one (exemption) per driver,” councillor Barb Evoy said.
Clerk Kerri O’Kane said based on workload and the newness of the program, “staff felt two exemptions per property was reasonable and we could manage it.”
O’Kane said while residents enter their information through the township’s website, the information is entered manually by staff and it’s a time-consuming job.
“We never discussed only two vehicles per household,” said councillor Lisa MacDonald.
“I think we have to take on more licence plates.”
“Our intent was that residents would be exempt from paid parking,” said councillor Jennifer Adams. “If we’re sticking to the intent – residents not paying – it would be diligent to take steps to revisit this.”
And revisit it they did.
Councillors wondered about pushing back the start date. They suggested opening up more registrations at a later date. And they talked about hiring more staff to process more registrations.
But O’Kane explained there has to be a deadline for registration. It cannot be open-ended, “otherwise people will get tickets,” she said.
“We’re working to make that date (Jan. 5). We would like to meet that date and we think two vehicles per household is a reasonable start.”
Managing director of corporate services Adam McNabb added that outside vendors are installing the payment kiosks and signs. So changing the start date has wider implications than staff workload.
And he said there needs to be caps on registrations to avoid potentially “spurious” behaviour.
“If there are no caps on households, someone could register hundreds of plates,” he said.
At the same time, the township is transitioning from the Provincial Offences Act (POA) to an administrative monetary penalty (AMP) system to deal with parking tickets.
The AMPs system is purported to be more efficient and keeps parking fines within the township and not the county, which currently reaps the financial benefits under the POA system.
All systems and bylaws have to dovetail to work together; changing the implementation date won’t make it easier, McNabb said.
Adams also noticed that residents can only park for free downtown once per day. They can park for three hours but can’t just move to another spot for another three hours.
“There’s a five-hour enforcement window,” O’Kane explained, adding the point of the three-hour time limit is to create turnover.
Residents who need to be downtown longer than three hours can park for free in zone two, which allows up to 24 hours of free parking for residents.
MacDonald noted the bylaw council was to vote on also restricts overnight parking from 2 to 6am in municipal lots through the winter. The rationale is to clear the lots for snow plowing, but MacDonald said residents who live downtown and don’t have a parking spot have nowhere else to park.
This is true in Fergus as well.
After much deliberation, council passed the original recommendation to approve the AMP system and to allow the paid parking system, effective Jan. 5.
But council also directed staff to amend the parking exemption program after Jan. 5 to include four registered vehicles per household for Centre Wellington residents.
“We’re not putting a time limit on that because that’s not fair to anyone,” Mayor Shawn Watters said, noting staff workload concerns.
“When that gets done, it gets done.”
Council also approved an exemption to no parking from 2 to 6am in the municipal parking lots on Provost Lane and Menzies Lane in Fergus and at the lot at 25 Metcalfe St. in Elora.
This exemption is effective Jan. 5 as well.
“It’s not necessarily perfect, but at least we’ll get going on it,” Watters said of the bylaw.
