Park Here! Please!

Parking-Amnesty Approval
Council approves - without in-depth discovery of Staff's supporting material and meaningful discussion - the City's "parking-ticket amnesty" in the Regular Council Meeting, 3 Dec, 2018.
While councillors energetically participate in the discovery and development of an earlier environmental issue: they now are far less expressive. Standing-out though is dramatically self-promoting Councillor Logtenberg, here with a grand gesture of us sometimes just having to suck it up and move on.

Telling us what to do is not part of your job-description, Councillor! We won't suck it up, and many of us will probably find it difficult to move on past the long history of the whole damn thing - with its entrenched lack of professionalism: transparency and accountability!

More on this amnesty-as-such prior to approval can be found in the post below:
Parking-Ticket Amnesia
27 Nov, 2018

Now What?
How many of the out-standing 27.000 tickets - of which a vague half now (belatedly) appear to be non-retrievable outside the area - will be paid at $15 per - between  
4 Dec, 2018 and 19 Jan, 2019 - we will know by the end of next month. Or not.
It will take longer to determine whether paying-up will have an impact on parking-attitudes, nurtured during 16 years of inconsistently paid fines and no result-focused supervision of process by those in charge at City Hall.

Amnesty-participation by many could be an indication of local drivers not only willing to mend their wicked parking-ways but also to atone for this behavior of old.
Acknowledging it as unbecoming of gluten-free tree-huggers.

Facebook subscribers paying (being warned to pay) amnesty-fines to the City online - for multiple tickets yet: may find at some point in the future that their credit-rating has been compromised. Seeing that Facebook gleans subscribers' data when emailing to/emailed from City Hall - also a subscriber - harvesting/selling them in bits. The same will apply to email traffic between possibly less subtle collection-agencies (more on them below) and hold-outs.
Off to the workhouse!
Paying in person may be the safer way to go. 

Conversely - the fewer takers the amnesty attracts - the clearer the indication that tossing tickets will continue to be the way to go.
City Hall's negligent P.R. job with getting the many-layered significance of their old system>amnesty>new system to the public in tardy bits and pieces - only incidentally divulged over weeks by the CFO to local news-media - may keep I-do-because-I-can attitudes fixed.

Referring those not participating in the amnesty to a collection-agency - as now proposed by the City - seems like a colossally labor-intensive, colossally expensive job. 
Is City Hall hiring?
Having such agency chase down someone for 50 bucks is bizarre. Costs of it would be much higher than the sum gone after. 
So - who gains? After who pays for it? 

Linking payment of fines to issuing new plates by the ICBC has not worked so far because it was really attempted by one municipality only - thus shrugged-off. 
So - for the province-wide apathetic now it's: been tried, can't be done!
While actually this needs City Hall to seriously organize itself around the issue with a clearly developed vision, to be shared with all MLAs in a concerted effort, and all UBCM members united! 
Looking for thoughtful practicable input from those who elected/hired you: the kind of issue you are paid very well to take-on!

Free Veterans'-Parking
What precedes the amnesty-approval in the same Council Meeting (its timing showing still more insensitivity to the public's current mood about parking-shenanigans in the street and at City Hall) is a request - 30 Oct, 2018 - for making parking free for those with a veteran's licence-plate.

"Dear Mr. Mayor Dooley
& Members of Nelson City Council

Re: Veteran's Parking
I was in Kamloops recently, and I was surprised and delighted to learn that, as a veteran, with veterans licence plates, I am entitled to park on any meter in the city or on any city parking lot, and that I am not required to pay.
Parking is free for veterans.
I understand that the gesture does not reduce revenues significantly because there are so few veterans. The merchants approve of the arrangement because it encourages veterans and their families to spend more time shopping. In Kamloops veterans are recognized as being special, having served in defence of their country. It is a generous and tangible way to say "thank you".
I would like to request that Nelson City Council give consideration to extending free parking to veterans with veterans licence plates, in recognition of their service.

Yours truly
Ieuan J. Gilmore"

This promptly initiates at City Hall the
"PROPOSAL: Provision of free parking to veterans
PROPOSED BY: Public"

"Council received a request from Ieuan Gilmore of Nelson requesting that Council consider providing free parking to vehicles that have veterans licence plates."

"People are eligible to apply for a veteran licence plate in British Columbia if they were honorably discharged from or are currently serving (author's emphasis)..."

1.
The request does not come from the "Public" but a single member of it.
2.
"Veteran licence plate" is a misnomer. Even current reservists fall under the vet-label here. 
3.
No Canadian Armed Forces members - past/current - have ever "served in defence of their country". Considering Canada has never been attacked militarily. 
4.
Yet his all-superseding come-on is "The merchants approve of the arrangement because it encourages veterans and their families to spend more time shopping."
While absurd reasoning - good P.R. for Chamber of Commerce reps at City Hall: wanting us all to shop local! For Xmas! No wonder this request was rushed through Council within a month! 

Who approve this also unanimously and without discussion. Such as: will these "veterans" be allowed to park anywhere, for any length of time? 
Presumably so - as restrictions are not part of the City PROPOSAL's approval. 

Consequences
Meter-maids say "they see approximately 10 vehicles per day with veteran's plates". Conceivably having 10 more cars hog metered parking-stalls must have significant impact on right-now/right-here availability. 
Seniors who are also vets will get vet-plates, thereby park anywhere forever. Giving-up their costly seniors' passes - and btw there goes that income for the City as well!

With Greyhound gone there will be more cars, ergo more parking needed. At this point allowing free-range parking - to an only vaguely defined group - is folly!

How long will tourists - the predominant force behind Nelson's economic health - put-up with ever decreasing parking?

For instance - the City gave-up almost 100 Nelson Commons parking-spaces, this requested in a Variance. Originally required by bylaw for a project of its size. This Variance had been worked on (for the Co-op) by the City long before even submitted to Council (by the Co-op).
Predictably, these spaces now missing have had a spiraling affect on the near neighborhood and from there into all of downtown.
City Hall looking after its own.

Smallishtown Politics!

With parking-attitudes as have been, no more parking to be squeezed into the streets, and old-parkade  spaces rented to permanents: Council needs to stop giving away parking-stuff reactively and start to proactively think of creating parking: a new state-of-the-art, architecturally stunning, multi-function parkade (in Railtown) now!

Nothing else will do (it)!

 

  



Image Credits:
John Nordell
livabl
dezeen
flickriver.com


City Council
nelsoncouncil@nelson.ca

Pam Mierau, Mgr. - Development Services
pmierau@nelson.ca

John Dooley, Mayor
jdooley@nelson.ca

Kevin Cormack, CAO
kcormack@nelson.ca