Park those fee hikes, Ottawa
Re: Transportation committee endorses increasing on-street parking rates, removing veto powers that protect free parking, Oct. 3.
This week, we heard that the City of Ottawa is increasing parking fees (by nearly 17 per cent) and expanding dramatically the number of spaces for which paid parking will be required. Also, we learned that transit fares have increased by 2.5 per cent again. This year, sewer and water fees are up dramatically. Likewise property taxes, garbage fees, user fees, etc.
We also learned last week that nearly 65 per cent of residents consider Ottawa unaffordable.
This business of coming out with a drip-drip-drip of fee increases means residents are left with the impression that no one at city hall is looking at the big picture and standing up for the little guy. Is it not past time for city council to demand that all fees be subject to the same cap as property taxes? Surely all these fee increases merit transparent, coherent consideration as a whole by council.
Maybe this way someone at city hall will be able to say: Hold on, how can we justify a 17 per cent increase when inflation is only two per cent?
Peter Webber, Ottawa
No wonder we haven’t replaced the CF-18
Re: Years of planning, 9,300 staff and not enough parking spots? Oct. 1.
Even with nearly 10 years’ lead time, the Department of National Defence’s forward planning for parking at its new headquarters in Kanata has failed miserably. Little wonder that, nine years after it was first broached, we are still at least five years from replacement of the CF-18 fighter jet.
Thomas Frisch, Ottawa
Put teachers on buses with students
I live across the street from an inner-city high school and it occurred to me that if DND has created a parking issue at its new site, then our public school system has created a more serious one. As I was reading your article, I noticed a steady stream of cars arriving at the school. It was around 8:30 a.m. and as students arrived by foot, bicycle and bus, more than 100 single-occupant cars arrived and parked in designated spaces.
Why are teachers driving to work? What if each of those parking spaces were converted to a green space with trees or shrubs and flowers, which would also allow groundwater absorption to occur? Wouldn’t that be smart, sustainable, green, educational, cost-saving, logical and ease flooding?
I then imagined this scene happening across the province and country: thousands and thousands of parking spaces turning into green spaces. I imagined teachers on buses with their students, having serious conversations about climate change, green and sustainable development and, of course, the value of good public transportation.
Schools are always served by buses, so why on God’s green earth are we encouraging teachers to drive to work?
Chris Leggett, Ottawa