When the Municipality of Jasper was incorporated, the new administration inherited two long-term parking lots located on Block S. Unfortunately, they also inherited several abandoned vehicles.

Now town officals are taking steps to remove the forgotten, rusting residents, but they are meeting with intransigent owners and bureaucratic conundrums as they attempt to create a workable policy for managing the lots.

There are now about ten abandoned vehicles left in the two lots, some of which have been parked in the same location since before incorporation. The current policy is to limit parking privileges to twelve months, but the cars, trucks and one dilapidated camper van that predates municipal control of the lots are not going anywhere fast.

Repeated attempts to negotiate with the registered owners of the vehicles in question have proved fruitless, Director of Corporate and Legislative Services Verne Balding told Council Tuesday. It’s been a frustrating process.

“We thought about just having a fire,” he joked. But all kidding aside, Balding has a plan to finally be rid of the problem vehicles. Owners will be given a final round of notices and if they do not claim their property the vehicles will be towed to Hinton and crushed, most likely on the municipality’s dime.

“We can recover some costs from the individual owners, but that won’t likely amount to more than 50 per cent of the total cost,” he said.

There are complications with two large vans parked in one of the lots, however. The vehicles are full of something: “we know not what,” Balding said. The municipality is not in a position to legally dispose of the contents of the vehicle.

“It’s a little bit of a quagmire, but we’ve decided to get this done and we will,” he said. “We’re just not quite sure how.”

Balding has also suggested changes to the administration of the lots in the future. Currently, the service is provided by the municipality for no charge. Paperwork is required for each car parked in the lots and it is estimated that maintaining and monitoring the lots is taking about 14 hours a week for Jasper’s bylaw enforcement staff.

“We are the only community, perhaps in the entire province, that provides this kind of service,” Balding said. The lots were originally dedicated as a winter and summer storage alternative for larger vehicles due to the Parks requirement that such vehicles could not stay on local streets, especially during winter. Even though the municipality has maintained the restrictions on parking oversized vehicles in certain areas of town, Balding believes that change is overdue.

“I’m not certain if the municipality should be in the business of providing that alternative,” he said. 

The municipality could conceivably contract out the management of the lots, discontinue the service entirely or charge a fee for parking. This last idea seemed to make sense to a number of councillors.

“We should be charging a fee,” said Mike Day. “The question is how much we should be charging.

“If it’s taking 14 hours out of someone’s week, that’s ridiculous.”

Creating a fee scheme might seem like an obvious solution but Balding informed councillors that there is a significant complication. The lots are not on municipal land and there is no lease agreement or land use arrangement between the town and Parks Canada.

“On what basis can we establish a fee for something that is not ours,” Balding asked, rhetorically.

Another councillor said that the lack of an agreement on the land should not stop the municipality from starting to charge for parking in the lots.

“Why don’t we just go on with business as normal,” Andy Walker said. “Let’s establish a policy and fee and get on with business.”

However, Balding expressed a desire to proceed in a thorough manner in terms of the legal particulars in this case before creating any policy and fee plan for the lots.

As for the layabout vehicles, Mayor Richard Ireland proposed a novel approach to dealing with the situation.

Ireland suggested removing to donate in certain cases where the vehicles are still in working or somewhat salvagable order.

“If we can haul it out and destroy it, why can’t we donate it to someone,” he said.