How long should one be allowed to park on the streets of Gravenhurst?
It appears the current limit of three hours and the resulting parking tickets are causing issues for some residents and guests.
During the most recent Gravenhurst council meeting, Coun. Penny Varney put forward a motion to review parking time limits.
Varney told council that she’s been contacted by labourers who have been ticketed while working on homes and businesses for parking on the street for more than three hours. She said the three-hour limit is also causing problems with tickets issued at special events.
“I just feel that the three-hour parking limit is too limited,” said Varney. “I’m asking for a little more compassion for businesses in the downtown area…and a bit more leniency from bylaw in urban areas.”
Melissa Halford, the Town’s director of development services, said a three-hour limit is common across the province. She said the goal is to create higher turnover in the downtown area and to avoid people using side streets as parking lots.
She said bylaw officers have discretion to practice leniency when handing out tickets.
“I can tell you they do excercise leniency all the time,” said Halford. “Contrary to some assertions over the years, we don’t have a quota.”
Mayor Heidi Lorenz said she had heard no complaints about the current system.
“We’re looking for more problems than we have now,” she said. “We don’t have staff out there looking and chalking tires.”
While the motion received some support it was ultimately defeated.
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Gert Frobe says
Mayor Heidi Lorenz said she “had heard no complaints about the current system.” Maybe Lorenz should go out into the community other than at election time. If you have not heard the complaints about the current ridiculous parking enforcement (and the preposterous comparison to the rest of the province aka Toronto) then you are either not in the community or are wearing ear plugs.
Is it too much to have people in politics who actually have common sense and listen to ordinary taxpayers?
robert barnes says
Hello Council
I think we need to look at our priorities. Not all priorities can be #1.
Our BIA works hard to bring Events to our town and this creates a lot more spinoff benefit than just the Event.
The town has been successful in bringing into town several large events this season, such as the (huge) Open Water Championships, music concerts, power boat regattas and coming soon the annual rowing regatta.
It must have left our visitors attending the Open Water Swimming event, who parked along Bethune Drive – off the pavement – to return to their vehicles to find a parking ticket on their windshield. That doesn’t say “Thanks for coming to this Town event”.
Lets not thank the spectators for attending an Event with a Parking Ticket. And please do not cite safety as the issue here – because this catchall reason does not have to be the issue here. Single side street parking can be an answer to the argument that fire trucks might have difficulty in navigating the street.
I would suggest to the By-laws Enforcement Department that their stated tight manpower budget not be spent on pursuing the small revenues from issuing parking tickets at the expense of the greater revenue benefit from the attendees of Town events.
The expense and energy spent on the low-hanging easy benefits from Parking ticket enforcement should not detract from the more urgent need to enforce the – granted more difficult – enforcement of speeding and intentional vehicle noise limits on the Town streets. These are more urgent safety issues and are issues for the Council members to address. Thank you to Councilor Penny Varney for highlighting this.
So lets get our priorities and our bureaucracy in order and support – not harm – the good work that our BIA is doing.
The right hand should know what the left hand is doing.
Robert Barnes
Gravenhurst resident.