City Council appears to be putting the brakes on the plan for a return to paid on-street parking in Downtown Guelph.
Instead, it voted Monday in favour of an option that will see a tax increase and monthly parking pass increase make up the 21 per cent of parking revenue that on-street parking was supposed to provide.
The tentatively-approved funding model will see the average homeowner in Guelph pay an extra $38 on their property taxes to help finance the new Wilson Street Parkade. That's $11 more than the funding model that included paid on-street parking.
Monthly parking passes will also increase $10 a month under the new funding model, which would be reviewed every five years, possibly earlier.
During a marathon 10-hour meeting of council’s committee of the whole Monday afternoon/night, council voted against implementing the paid on-street parking plan presented by city staff that would have seen people pay $2 an hour to park on the street starting in late 2019.
Monday’s decision still has to be finalized at the full council meeting at the end of the month.
A compromise amendment by Mayor Cam Guthrie to delay paid on-street parking until after the Wilson Street Parkade opened narrowly failed.
Council also voted to look at issuing parking passes on some peripheral streets near downtown and will also be forming a downtown parking committee.
It seemed like an unusual turn of events, given that council has made several decisions and votes in the past few years getting to Monday night’s presentation of the updated parking master plan.
Staff has also spent countless hours arriving at the recommendations it brought forth Monday, which included the paid on-street parking that has been debated numerous times over the past few years.
There was also a wide variety of stakeholder and public consultation, council heard Monday.
Financing downtown parking through general property taxes “doesn’t seem fair to me,” said coun. Bob Bell. He said it “runs contrary to all our corporate principals.”
During lengthy discussion, Deputy CAO Scott Stewart made the comment that “debt financing for Wilson Street starts next year and it’s got to be paid. Somebody’s got to pay it.”
Marty Williams, Executive Director of the Downtown Guelph Business Association, who delegated at Monday’s meeting, again reiterated that paid on-street parking would hurt downtown merchants.
“Paid on-street parking is an annoyance that will drive people away,” Williams said. “The conclusion that paid parking doesn’t affect business is not a fact.
“The challenges are out there Mr. Mayor, please don’t add another one,” Williams said to Guthrie.
Kealy Dedman, Guelph’s City Engineer and General Manager of Engineering and Capital infrastructure Services, told council that there is “no empirical evidence” that paid on-street parking has an affect on the economic health of a downtown.
Williams also called for greater enforcement, which city staff said would be increasing with the addition of an extra bylaw vehicle and bylaw officers being freed up from other tasks to do more enforcement.
