Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
The Municipality of Jasper is looking to make it easier for residents to be exempt from paid parking this upcoming season.
Should council approve this change, the resident permit program would require a one-time registration process with no on-street action required.
“There would not be a 500-hour account of what people are using, because what we’re after is removing the on-street action, so you just register online once,” said Christine Nadon, director of Protective and Legislative Services, during her presentation to council at the Feb. 28 committee of the whole meeting.
“It is very much our intention to take the permits from 2022 and make them active in 2023, so we wouldn’t go through the whole process of reregistering everyone.”
Nadon noted, however, that the absence of on-street action would limit the municipality’s ability to gather data.
Another proposed change would be to convert the upper McCready Centre parking lot to resident parking only.
Administration also recommended increasing the parking lot rates to $3 per hour, which would match off-street and on-street parking rates.
While recommending these changes, administration stated that it wanted to operate this year’s paid parking program in an overall similar fashion to 2022.
This includes keeping the program seasonal and maintaining the maximum time limits for parking.
Minimal policy changes would help the municipality keep monitoring and analyzing parking demand data and track year-to-year changes and impacts on the program, according to administration.
It would also allow administration to gain more experience and manage the program better.
Last year, paid parking generated $668,354 in revenue and incurred $147,762 in direct expenses, resulting in a net revenue of $520,592.
The budget revenue target set by council for 2023 is $675,000.
In addition, the approved 2023 capital budget allocates $25,000 for two more payment kiosks to be installed this spring.
Coun. Ralph Melnyk commended the idea of kiosks and pushed for even more to be installed.
“I think the kiosks are integral in having people pay for parking. If they can find a kiosk, I think that would be helpful in achieving more revenue, and I would encourage—if there’s space in our budget—you can go for more kiosks.”
Melnyk added that they should increase the parking time limit to a three-hour maximum in order to better accommodate restaurant patrons.
Since half of council was not present during this meeting, the present councillors recommended bringing this item back for the next committee meeting on March 14.
