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Tofino earns praise for parking enforcement

In a relative change-of-pace, Tofino’s district office received rare kudos for its parking enforcement efforts.

Traditionally, whenever parking appears on Tofino’s council meeting agendas the conversation is about how there’s not enough of it, or how it needs to be managed differently, or how violations aren’t being enforced effectively.

During May 12's regular council meeting however, council reviewed a letter from Tofino Sea Kayaking’s operations manager Liam McNeil who praised the district’s 2014 enforcement efforts.

“It is with sincere gratitude that I write to thank the District of Tofino for the Parking Enforcement in the downtown core during the 2014 summer season,” McNeil wrote.

“The parking enforcement during the 2014 summer season resulted in a noticeable and appreciated increase in parking availability and turnover in our area of town.”

Tofino Sea Kayaking is located on Main Street, an area that McNeil suggested is prone to parking problems.

“For many reasons, parking availability in the vicinity of our business can often become scarce,” he wrote.

“Although parking stalls surrounding our businesses are listed as 4 and 8 hour timed parking, it is not unusual for the spots to be occupied for extended periods of time, thereby restricting visitation to the many local businesses in our area.”

He suggested the district’s efforts helped keep vehicle-turnover high last year and asked that these efforts continue this summer.

“With the 2015 summer season fast upon us, we sincerely look forward to the District of Tofino again committing to the respectful parking enforcement which the town demonstrated last year,” he wrote.

After council reviewed McNeil’s letter, Coun. Cathy Thicke said she was happy to see parking enforcement earning praise but suggested there is more work to be done, including issuing more actual fines for parking infractions instead of just warnings.   

“We’ve had a lot of discussions about this in the last couple months and I do think that, when it comes to certain areas of town, we need to not just have the warnings,” she said.

She added council should have a larger conversation about parking with a focus on buses and RV’s and said she had recently seen a “72-passenger bus” parked at Tonquin Beach that took up about 10 parking spots.

“I would like to have a more thorough discussion about what we envision for the summer in terms of how hard we’re going to be about ticketing and, also, just what we envision about buses in this town over the coming months,” she said.

Mayor Josie Osborne noted council is expecting a report from staff about parking and suggested parking would continue to be a regular feature of council conversations.  

 

Andrew.bailey@westerlynews.ca



Andrew Bailey

About the Author: Andrew Bailey

I arrived at the Westerly News as a reporter and photographer in January 2012.
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