A downtown shopper, who preferred not to be named, puts money into a meter on Somerset Street. She put in $2 but the meter failed to register the payment.
A report on city parking operations released last week is old news as far as Ottawa business improvement area associations are concerned.
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street BIA, says the city auditor’s report is unsatisfactory.
“It’s like he just took a snapshot of last February,” she says.
The audit was the result of BIAs fighting for a system to regulate parking fee changes, says Mellor. They have had several meetings over the past year with city parking operations to raise their concerns and demand the city develop a parking management policy, she says.
The audit found the city doesn’t have a systematic way to monitor parking operations, and this creates several problems.
“We knew that a year and a half ago,” says Mellor. “Get on with it.”
The report states that downtown parking meters aren’t producing as much revenue for the city as they should. Parking meter spaces generate only two to three hours of revenue daily.
There are about 4,000 parking meters located throughout Ottawa, and the city collects about $7 million annually through its on-street parking operations.
Derek Crain, executive director of the Somerset Village BIA, says parking has always been a sensitive issue in Centretown, and it's important to make sure parking space is properly maintained. “We have such bad maintenance of parking meters that get jammed up or take people’s money,” he says, referring to the meters in Somerset Village.
The audit recommended city management be more proactive in maintaining parking equipment.
Currently, if a parking meter is not working properly, the city might not be aware of it until someone reports it to city management. Malfunctioning meters can go undetected for several days.
This results in a loss of revenue to the city, as well as frustration for people who park at defective meters and receive a ticket.
The city is looking into other options to improve downtown parking, such as replacing meters with pay and display systems beginning in 2010.
Mellor says the BIAs were hoping to see some different recommendations from the auditor’s report, specifically where parking fee changes are concerned.
“When city council needs to boost revenue they say ‘let’s just raise parking rates,’ for no rhyme or reason,” she says.
Raising parking rates can negatively affect BIAs, she added. For example, there are very few cars parked along Bank Street Promenade on weekends. It doesn’t make sense to raise parking rates when there are a bunch of empty spaces, she says.
To address this issue, the city may choose to have different parking meter rates for different times of the day, Mellor says. When demand for parking is high, the rates would be higher. When demand is low, the rates would be lower.