Parking tickets going up, but still reasonable
The cost of failing to pay for onstreet parking or staying past the paid time limit in Saskatoon has increased five-fold in the last 10 years.
City council voted on Monday to hike parking tickets by $10 to $30 as part of efforts to address a $9-million shortfall in the city’s 2017 budget as a result of the March 22 provincial budget.
The move is expected to raise an additional $750,000 in 2017. For that to happen, 75,000 tickets will have to be issued in the last six months of the year, since the increase is slated to take effect July 1.
Parking tickets were last increased five years ago, to $20 from $10. Prior to that, fines were increased from $6 to $10 in 2007.
Brent Penner, executive director of the downtown business improvement district, appeared before council on Monday to warn the increase could hurt downtown businesses.
“I don’t think the sky’s falling or anything like that,” Penner said in an interview on Wednesday. “You can’t just look at fines without looking at what’s going on downtown.”
Council voted for the measure by a 6-5 margin to avoid a greater
property tax increase. As it was, property taxes were increased by 0.93 per cent on top of the 3.89 per cent increase council approved in November.
Saskatoon’s increased parking fine remains lower than other major Prairie cities like Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. Regina also raised its parking tickets by $10 in response to the provincial budget, but the hike applies to all parking infractions.
The increase in Saskatoon only applies to the early payment option for failing to pay for parking or staying after the paid time has expired. In Regina, for example, the cost of waiting longer than 14 days to pay a ticket rises from $55 to $65 on July 1. In Saskatoon, paying for a ticket 14 or more days after it was issued remains $50.
An increase to $30 for the early payment option was first proposed by Saskatoon city hall administration in January 2015. At that time, Penner compared Saskatoon to other cities of fewer than 400,000 people, like London, Regina, Kelowna and Kingston; only London issued tickets of $30, while the rest charged $20.
Randy Pshebylo, executive director of the Riversdale business improvement district, also appeared before council on Monday to warn the increase in parking fines could deter people from visiting business districts.
Penner said previous parking ticket hikes have been justified by the need to cover the cost of enforcement. A comprehensive downtown parking study released a year ago suggested parking revenue go to a reserve fund to pay for future parking infrastructure, he noted.
“For me, I look at this as a bit of a lost opportunity.”
Mayor Charlie Clark spoke out against increasing parking fines. Coun. Cynthia Block, who represents the downtown and Broadway districts, questioned whether proper procedure was followed in increasing fines.
Coun. Randy Donauer admitted he faced a “dilemma” in approving the fine increase because he sympathized with businesses, but did not want property taxes to increase any more.
Coun. Darren Hill countered that a new parking app for smartphones makes paying for parking so much easier that “if you get a ticket, it should be considered a voluntary payment.”