Parking fine increase on council agenda
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on February 7, 2023.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
Council will be asked today to give second and third readings to a bylaw that would allow the City to increase the fines for parking infractions.LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Lethbridge city council today will be asked to give second and third readings to a bylaw increasing fines for parking penalties in Lethbridge.
The parking fine increase initiative was approved in last November’s budget deliberations.
Council gave first reading on Jan. 24 to Bylaw 6393, a bylaw to amend Traffic Bylaw 5834.
If parking fines are increased, the penalty would rise from $25 to $50 while maintaining the $15 reduction if the fine is paid within seven days of offense.
The current traffic bylaw has three schedules with fines of $25, $30 and $50. All fines are reduced by the same $15 amount if paid in seven days.
According to a report to council submitted by Traffic Engineering and Planning Manager Ahmed Ali, most infraction sections in the traffic bylaw relate to parking and current fines are the lowest compared to similar municipalities.
Ali’s report says one flat fine will make the application of fines “simple and encourage compliance.”
The report to council says lower parking fines aren’t a meaningful deterrent to infractions while increasing them will result in increased compliance and also an increase in parking revenue without the City implementing a parking rate increase.
“This could result in enhanced level of service by increasing parking turnover,” says the report.
The report says increasing parking turnover through increased compliance will help “businesses to have parking available for their customers.”
The anticipated revenue increase from the fine hike is expected to be $250,000 annually.
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This should reaffirm any suspicions that the city’s leadership was planning to kill downtown businesses.
Why? It’s hard to say, but they let the addicts and criminals take over downtown, destroying Galt Gardens and other parks. Because of all the crime and damage to property, many people avoided downtown.
They restricted traffic on Third Avenue and intend to continue their plans all the way to Mayor Magrath Drive, thereby destroying a significant route for traffic heading toward the downtown core.
Now, they double the fines which will keep more people away! Are You Serious?
Are they giving the Blackfoot Confederacy the entire downtown as an urban reserve? Are they hiring accountants with the intention of making millions by destroying downtown, driving down real estate values, purchasing undervalued properties, and then inflating prices to sell them for profits under a new guise or strategy? Can they be so naive not to recognize that everything they are doing is killing downtown? Nobody is that stupid, are they?
We’ve had enough, so coming out swinging! It is time to demand many of this city’s leadership be removed and replaced and demand accountability!
It is time we fire the accountants!
The Chamber of Commerce is silent once more!
Is it the city administration or the consultants/accountants they hire? I do agree that all the actions you speak, including the increased parking will destroy downtown businesses who are already struggling and some still from the safe consumption site impacts. Everytime they see hope . . . some other ‘great idea’ comes out of nowhere the negatively impacts downtown.
I suspect this idea came from the accounting firm who has given them the other overpaid advice that will negative impact the community.
I have been trying to get a ball park total of how much the homeless/addicts/encampments issues have cost the municipal taxpayer. The funds that come from our property taxes and other local revenues.
There answer is that they don’t track it! My response is that you continue to throw millions of taxpayer money at the issues and you can’t tell me how much you have spent? Council doesn’t know . . . the Mayor doesn’t know . . . the Clerk doesn’t know . . . the overpaid accountants don’t know!
My calculations are over $14 million for last year! That doesn’t include the tens of millions given to the city from the federal and provincial governments.
YET . . . They devise this great plan to increase parking fines believing that it will bring in $250,000 more annually!
This is what happens when you allow bean counters (accountants) to make decisions instead of government who you elected to make the right decisions and make sure that we have proper administration in place to server the community!
This is a very bad decision that will once again impact the downtown businesses negatively and close more!
But . . . LOL . . . guess what . . . the electric scooters brought big business to the downtown . . . LOL . . . right . . . they failed to consider that COVID took away business, but once the restrictions were lifted, more people came back to shop . . . but it was because of the scooters they say . . . you just can’t believe anything anymore!!!
This comment shows just out of touch the city is:
“This could result in enhanced level of service by increasing parking turnover,” says the report.
This is so out of touch!
paid parking, and increasing fines for missing meter deadlines, is more likely to further dissuade people from shopping downtown…save for the free parking that is to be found at the two malls.
if one wants to hang out over a coffee, does one go to an independent cafe, and pay for parking on top of their bill, or settle for a starbucks at the mall with no parking overhead and no worry of missing the meter? ditto when shopping clothes or most everything else.
the idea of devaluing land downtown is not an absurd one. it is not unlikely that there have been deals concocted whereby land the city holds has been sold at bottom prices to a usual cast of characters. those characters then make an easy profit knowing that the land they have bought cheap is soon to spike in value. we might consider land where the northside and southside walmarts are, as well as where mayor magrath south and scenic dr intersect as worth a look. the purchase of the old downtown iga – where the underserving per public dollar casa now stands – was a great example of sleaze. that property deal was not properly investigated for criminality, but, there was much about that deal that was utterly beyond being fair and reasonable, if not in fact criminal. however, without a source of investigative journalism in our city, and with never an audit, it would take quite the knowledgeable and active citizen to uncover as much for us.
i remain mystified as to why the masses in our city do not demand audits. in addition to uncovering sleaze/criminality, they help to discover the likes of waste, redundancy, inefficiency. mind you, for audits to be worth the expense, they need to come with mechanisms that force timely actions to address the issues uncovered.
Maybe if this city would be fiscally responsible we would not need to try to increase revenues downtown. There seems be plenty of funds for bike trails, the indigenous, the addicts, but for the business entrepreneurs, it is one hit after another by this City Administration!
I would suggest it is time to rally the troops and surround City Hall in protest with thousands of frustrated citizens who are tired of this irresponsible, thoughless administration who appears to have their heads in clouds of pot smoke judging by all these decisions.
But people will just sit back and say, ‘there is nothing I can do about it’ as usual.
It is time we demanded changed and our tax dollars employ people who consider downtown business, it’s residents and the whole city. We do have the power to make these demands.
Once again, an administrator in City Hall trying to justify his job by making more money for the City coffers. Whose insane idea was this, anyhow? Time for a witch hunt through City Hall!