First off I think you need to mention when Councillors become elected and come into this position they are placed in a situation where they need to think outside the box on how to create new avenues for revenue growth or how to change a service to make it more attainable or affordable or to start thinking about the long-term capital affects of some thing.

So I would like to say that some people do not agree with having a report on this, but I would like to say that that is what the job of a Councillor is meant to do - to ask a question, to be provided with information so you can make a decision whether or not there’s a financial study or financial guideline to move forward with that decision. So I think that’s one thing we all need to remember - no matter what someone does or brings up, they are thinking of that with the intention of “how do I access some new  funds for a purpose.”

My questions and concerns that come from the report stem back more to someone similar to what Councillor Merton has just highlighted. We had a paid parking program in place for - Councillor Thomas will tell us because you’ve written so many biographies on this - it has been around for 100 years. And we never saw the success of a paid parking system in our downtown core. The Deputy Mayor was one of the big members to release and remove the paid parking in the downtown core to try to entice opportunities for businesses and get some more opportunities without having to get the worry of paid parking or someone is going to chalk your tires every two hours. 

So when I think of that experience we had from the past case studies of how we actually had paid parking. I’ve sat through seven budgets – Ms. Allan has sat through more than me - and I’ve never recalled a time when we look through our budget for parking that said we were in a positive situation. Anytime we look to do a capital funding or any kind of challenge with it in a parking lot or anything, our parking lot still couldn’t earn enough revenue to offset the expense that we were paying.

So before even getting into the discussion of whether it’s Kelso Beach or the Bayshore or anything else me just on the financial aspect of it, I don’t understand, even if we were going to do a data collection how that’s  going to pan out in the end considering we have so many past years of paid parking experience and we’ve moved from that decision. So we’re moving a motion from it, that’s where my view is - I don’t see that.

Certain areas that, if they did come in to play adding parking to Kelso Beach or Harrison Park, the concerns that instantly come into my mind are the issues we faced with Georgian College a number of years ago. Georgian College instituted a paid parking program and all those individuals who didn’t want to pay for parking moved down the road onto a residential side street and the next thing we’re putting up signs saying there’s no on-street parking there any longer.

So instantly, that is the first thing I go to. People are smart. If they don’t want to pay for a bag tag, they'll find a city garbage can. If they don't want to pay for parking, they’ll find an area where they can park.

And finally when I go back and think of certain areas and parking I think what’s the difference between Harrison Park ,Kelso Beach, any park - they are used for a different purpose than when you use, for example, the Attack. People go to the Attack with the expectation they are going to spend money - they pay $28 to go to watch a hockey game. We have 50 people around on a priority waiting list to get in the paid priority parking - who are paying $160 upfront just to have a guaranteed parking spot. If you’re going to an Attack game and you have an extra $160 to pay for parking, well we’ve got 50 people were willing to give us $7500 as of tomorrow. I’d say there are other ways. If we’re looking for revenue generation that are there may be some things make more sense - maybe Attack games makes sense to charge for parking , maybe events to charge for parking. But taking into account the numbers we’ve seen an historical case studies of what we’ve experienced for the past 100 years, I can’t justify the fact of spending $40,000 to get further data collection to make a decision on whether or not we’re going to move forward when in my mind, I don’t think those things line up.