As I’ve indicated before, parking is a really big deal here in River City, and that impression has been more than validated by the creation of a parking working group, or a PWG, to grapple with the intricacies and complexities involved with parking in a community of some 8500 souls.
This appears to be a comprehensiveapproach to addressing parking issues, where stakeholders, vested interests, by-law enforcement, political actors, municipal staff, and industry experts gather to collaborate and weigh-in on subject that, if improperly handled, can lead to interventions by concerned citizens like Bonnie Mask and her photo album.
Under the general direction of Fire Chief Michael Guest, who also commands the parking desk over at Fort Renfrew, the committee, or working group, will likely sit down with a jug of Tim Horton’s coffee and some baked treats to identify parking needs in the community and hammer out a response that will please everyone.
Except if that were true, we’d be in no need of a working group in the first place, since all of this would have been resolved years ago. But apparently, parking is a fluid issue, a shape-shifter of a thing, meaning it’s a son-of-a-gun of a thing to pin down. Often it’s an exercise in the very best of intentions I suppose, but perhaps lacking the iron fist of enforcement in many cases, leading to a possible disconnect with respect to intentions and policy delivery.
Tasked as political representatives are councillors Jason Legris, Clint McWhirter, and Andrew Dick. They’ll be joined by staffers like the CAO, the Director of Fire, Emergency and Protective Services, the Supervisor of Public Works, the Coordinator of Protective Services, and the Bylaw Enforcement Officer. The guy from the Raglan Street Esso was busy.
These are all eminent and distinguished persons, all of whom are dialled-in to the ins and outs, the pros and cons, and the ups and downs of parking and its attendant requirements.
They also happen to be folks who sit around the two rings of a Tuesday night council meeting on a regular basis, so fortunately for Chief Guest, he didn’t have to travel very far to find the bottoms to fill the seats on the new working group.
I know that terms of reference have a role to play, and I know the Town of Renfrew is a corporation, and I know corporations like their paperwork and procedure. But wow.
I suppose the terms of reference identify the areas of study, and that’s a good thing.
Objectives for the group will include reviewing and evaluating the effectiveness of the existing parking bylaw, and identify any challenges associated with that bylaw. They’ll also look at the realities of current enforcement. They will consider factors such as economic development, environmental sustainability, safety and accessibility.
On and off-street parking regulations will be looked at, parking permit policies reviewed, time limits and fees examined.
In other words, a whole-of-delivery examination will be undertaken by the group. There might even be a power point.
With all this said, and all the deliverables identified and suitably delivered, will the resulting report amount to much more than another sheaf of papers occupying space in the Town’s rigorous filing system made famous by the Third-Party Ma-Te-Way report?
Will vehicles still be allowed to sit on Hall Street out in front of that hair salon on the corner of Plaunt and Hall? Will people continue to park facing the wrong way on the wrong side of the road? Will utility trailers continue to be allowed to just sit on the side of the road, or half-on half-off the road, waiting there for somebody to come and plow into them?
How about parking spots that create blind spots? Blind spots are, after all, one of Renfrew’s primary calling cards. One of those chic little things that attract tourists.
Or is parking primarily a Raglan, Plaunt, and Argyle thing? And how many parking spots in this area are occupied by business owners and employees of places along these roadways? How about that collision waiting to happen with every right turn off Raglan onto Renfrew East with a parking spot right there inside the legitimate turning arc of traffic coming off Raglan? What kills me is that this parking spot was identified as being legitimate for the most recent road construction effort downtown by Renfrew’s default road construction company. As obvious a problem as it is to the uneducated eye, it still managed to get past planners, engineers and construction supervisors. Which is hardly a ringing endorsement for what may come from the new working group.
Newly installed CAO Gloria Raybone has indicated that the composition of the group is “reasonable, comparable to industry standards, and providing a good range of expertise,” which doesn’t exactly scream out as a ringing validation of industry standards and what may constitute expertise. Industry standard is a buzz-term that municipal staffers like to trot out just in case something goes south in the process. As in, if it things go poorly, we can blame it on Pembroke, or Navan, or Trout Creek, who all may have followed a similar procedure to a glowing and presumably comprehensive happy ending with their own parking policies. Plus, she’s a member of the working group, so what could we really expect her to say?
The working group is a consensus-driven decision-making body, unless somebody has the temerity to express an alternate opinion, in which case they’ll hammer that person down with a vote. As Andrew Dick is part of the working group, there may well be a need for the Chairperson to cudgel the sometimes recalcitrant councillor into shape consensus-wise. Which is more than okay, because Andrew Dick is a good time no matter what the issue may be, no matter the mandate, and the fact that the working group meetings will be recorded and made available to the public gives watchers of municipal government something to look forward to.
Parking has been a topic that has flummoxed council for at least two of the meetings that I’ve attended, first raising its head a couple of months back when I first started attending meetings. Now, with the terms of reference, we’ll have a working group in action by March 2025. Which means a half-year will have gone by before the first coffee is poured at the first meeting of the group, meaning that if this is an example of a priority issue, we’ll all be dead before those freaking cars in front of the hair salon are dealt with.
But this is the reality of municipal government and municipal politics, where inertia appears to be the dominant course of action. Because doing nothing is a form of doing something, just not much.
I believe I could stand at the end of my driveway and flag down cars for ten minutes and arrive at a group suitably comparable to the reasonable, industry-standard, and expertise-laden group constituted in the working group, no offence to any of its membership. And we’d be up and running in the time it took me to boil a kettle, probably because we’d be actually doing something rather than going through the motions of appearing to be doing something.
There’s a difference.
So maybe we can stop talking about talking about parking and actually get on with the business of talking about parking.
COVER PHOTO: Photo by Jarrod Erbe on Unsplash
NEWSMAGRENFREW 