Mayor ticketed $50 for illegal parking

Tells driver to stash car at Lisgar Street

Mayor Jim Watson paid a $50 parking ticket Friday after telling his driver to stash his car in a no-parking zone at City Hall, his spokesman said.

Before heading to an event in Kanata, the notoriously peripatetic mayor stopped in at Thursday night’s crowded consultation on possible routes for light rail west of downtown but asked his driver to keep the car at City Hall’s Lisgar Street entrance.

“He thought his parking pass allowed the car to be to parked there, but this was not the case,” spokesman Ryan Kennery said.

City bylaw officers have been strict about violations in the crowded parking lot. It has about half a dozen spots each for shortstop couriers and for reporters covering news at City Hall, plus one spot reserved for people charging electric cars at the building’s free electricity station.

Enforcement was stepped up after the charger went in last year. Accustomed to generally lax surveillance, drivers of regular vehicles ignored the electric-cars-only sign and blocked the charger off, so the rules started being applied more strictly. Bylaw officers slapped tickets on cars parked too long in the courier spots and ones left in the media spots without ID on display. Even a police car parked in a no-parking zone got a ticket.

The bylaw officers have since eased off a bit, but they still do blitzes from time to time, like the one that caught the mayor.

Watson, who is paid $168,000 a year, paid the ticket out of his own pocket, Kennery said.

“He thinks he has received about three parking tickets since taking office, in his own car, all of which have been paid from his own pocket,” he added.