Quinte West council is taking a look at remodelling its system for municipal parking, specifically downtown.
At Monday night’s council meeting council reviewed a staff report suggesting they shake up the antiquated parking system.
Currently there are 661 municipal parking spots, 442 of which are in parking lots and 219 of which are on streets.
The current system requires payment at meters for on-street parking at coin meters while payment for lot spaces is done at centralized coin machines in the lots.
The staff report suggests that the equipment is both at the end of its service life and expensive to replace.
The suggestion for a hybrid parking system would see the payment removed for on-street parking altogether and instead it would simply be time-sensitive, limited to one or two hours depending on a final decision from council.
The spots in parking lots would remain paid, but the current coin payment machines would be replaced with more modern machines that can take cash, card or mobile payments, something that staff say has been an issue for patrons seeking a diversity of payment options.
In order to maintain the time limit on street parking there would be a floating by-law officer who would keep an eye on vehicles in the parking spaces and issue fines for overstaying.
Price points for paid parking is also brought up in the staff report.
Currently parking in Quinte West is 50 cents per hour which sits well below Belleville’s one dollar per hour and that of other nearby municipalities as well, which average between $1 and $1.50.
Questions arose from councillors about how the by-law officers would keep track of cars parking in street spaces and to what degree, if at all, parking fees would be increased.
Director of Planning and Development said that if council approved the recommendation, staff would gauge other municipalities for best practices on hybrid parking systems and conduct research based on budgets with regards to increasing parking fees.
Council voted on and approved the recommendation meaning a staff report on the matter will be returned to council at a future date.
To see the full staff report, click here.
