HawthorneVillager.com

What I like about the 3 hr limit is that it is making best use of the parking officer's time. I don't like the idea of we as taxpayers paying someone's salary to sit around and wait. I would have no problem with a time extension to 6 hrs, but one would have to check if there's other implications to marking tires and shift overlap. Would it introduce a legal loophole? If it would, then I'd have to say stick with the status quo on this issue.

Schools are public property and I think they have signs posted regarding parking after hours. The problem we have usually had at our kids schools is that they are already short of spaces even for the teachers to park, so when other people have parked there (and they do for days), teachers end up parking on the road and get ticketed. One even had her car hit on Bennett.

I agree with a previous poster. I have no problem with the current 3 hours except on the rare occasion but then we use the parking consideration. I too would be afraid of residents abusing it if it were extended.

I have three teenagers at home - two who would like cars, but we have no room for them so they are not getting cars! That is our problem, not one the neighbors should have to deal with.

If they can't even find out which cars have a parking exemption so they don't ticket those cars how do you expect them to do this?

I think you missed the sarcasm on the post, not that it couldnt be done, but it would be a waste of time and resources in my opinion.

I use parking considerations regularly and I cant say I've had a problem personally with wrongful tickets and lets face it if you're mother in-law is visting more than 18 times a year, shouldnt you be glad the bylaw is there to discourage her from visiting

Not that we should rush out and model ourselves after Toronto but I have a friend who is a bylaw officer it Toronto and he writes plenty of tickets in areas that do not have a 3hr limit and does so efficiently.

Also if I understand correctly it seems we already have an inefficient system that relies on people calling in offenders. I imagine this would mean officers spend a lot of their shift driving across town.

As a side note I also hear that a lot of revenue is generated by people who use the street as their own personal parking for over night parking. The bylaw officer makes that their first stop of the day and is able to just walk up and down the street writing tons of tickets (in areas where there is no parking from 7 a.m -)

The current 3 hours is fine. My vote is to leave it as is, for sure. If we can't manage with 18 exceptions PER VEHICLE per year, then there's something really wrong.

The problem isn't visitors ... it's lazy home owners who don't feel like jockeying their cars around, or don't feel like cleaning out their garages.

If parking is extended to 6 hours or longer, the current crop of abusers will just park more of their cars on the street en masse. I'm sure they'd love a 6 hour limit ... they'd hardly ever have to jockey the cars any more since they can now park on the road with near impunity. Meanwhile, the streets will look like crap and there will be a lot less spots for visitors than before.

Agreed, unless people here have been pretty quiet I haven't heard a lot of people saying they've actually ran out of considerations and it is causing a big problem.

Sounds like it boils down to a few key things
1. People dont realize you get 18 considerations a year per car, and not just 18 considerations
2. Someone needs to figure out why people who have called in considerations are still getting tickets occasionally so that the system works better
3. Neighbors use a little sensibility when calling in parking enforcement, and dont sit there with your stop watch when someone has guests over.

Maybe the easiest solution is to run it similar to garbage, if you go over you're limit you can purchase more considerations at a small cost.

We've never had a problem with parking on the street during the day (but it's not a frequent occurrence). We have had a few tickets when parked on the street overnight.

Most of the time if we know someone will be on the street overnight we get an exemption. The online system is easy enough and we've never had a problem once we get one.

I voted for the 6 hour option, but, I think just extending it to 4 hours would probably solve a lot of problems. While it's nearly impossible to have a dinner guest stay over in under 3 hours, a 4 hour window actually seems a lot more suitable. Four hours also is still enforceable based on the current restraints, although not as easy as the three hour window.

Plus, I'd also disallow overnight parking between 2am-6am (or something similar) without a parking consideration, so that the parking enforcement can go after the heavy offenders with a lot of ease. The residents who are using the street as their driveway would end up with a pile of tickets very quickly, since sending out a bylaw officer on any random night, and they can just start ticketing any car they see. Although I think you'd want to get a real-time system for the bylaw officers to capture up to date parking consideration info. It would be a bit of an investment, but, they'd capture it in ticket revenue very quickly I'm sure.

It would be a more complex system for sure, but not drastically so, and it would target the people who abuse the system, and give a little more slack to residents for having guests over.

This is where my knowledge on the topic runs out, and it's time for people to investigate only if it's warranted.
From what I understand, the ticketing is farmed out to another company, (please correct me if I'm wrong) which means that WE the town should not need to put any development costs into it. We could, in theory, kick off an RFP process when the current contract nears exipry, stating new minimum service requirements (which include real time access to the consideration system) and see what additional service costs might arise, if any.
This would be REGARDLESS of whether the limit remains at 3hrs, or is changed.
Thoughts?
I like IDEAS much better than hearing "the status quo is not acceptable"

The Town has it's own parking enforcement officers, not contractors. There is a consolidation centre for processing tickets that aren't paid within the 30 day period. I beleive they have joined forces with the rest of Halton and Peel regions to make the prcessing more economical.

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Geer

Great, that's a start! has this changed recently? It was in early September (September 8th is in my call log) that they told me they use an outside company... one whose "employees are sworn in as Law Enforcement Officers".

When did the change occur?

Not sure. I know the town has two town vehicles assigned to parking patrol and stickered as such.

But in case that has changed, I will ask when I'm at Town Hall tomorrow.

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Geer

As far as I recall parking enforcement is currently outsourced to Allied. There were 4-5 companies that bid. They use at least on milton provided vehicle and provide one of their own.

Thanks, thought so We'll see what Geer finds out tomorrow (if there was a recent change)

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Fred De Carolis
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