By Cecilia Nasmith
The face of parking in Cobourg may be in for dramatic changes, following a report at Monday's committee-of-the-whole council meeting.
Director of Public Works Laurie Wills' 14-page report offers a number of options, and will be referred to the Transportation Advisory Committee, Downtown Business Improvement Area and Waterfront Working Group for comment by Nov. 26, with an eye to further discussion at the Dec. 6 committee-of-the-whole council meeting.
Options include dividing parking lots into premium and secondary status, extending paid waterfront parking status into a number of residential streets, instituting a new Waterfront Seasonal Pass for residents, possible hikes in parking rates and rises in parking-ticket fines.
Deputy Mayor Suzanne Seguin predicted the DBIA would be against any downtown increase.
“Downtown workers are suffering as a result of COVID,” Seguin said.
“A lot of people are concerned about parking. A lot of our downtown stores are finding people don't go downtown because of the parking.”
“I would be very much against any increase for the downtown,” Councillor Brian Darling agreed.
“Waterfront is a different story. I think visitors would pay a little extra to park down there, but I think the downtown will be a longer conversation.”
Councillor Nicole Beatty suggested lumping in the Donegan Park parking lot into the paid-waterfront-parking list. It is well used for overflow parking in the summer, Darling allowed, but there's the other park usage to consider.
“There's lots of soccer tournaments and ball tournaments that happen on the fields there. Local residents come for sports, there might be a bit of kickback when (in) all the other sports fields the parking is free,” Darling pointed out.
“There's a lot of options in this report,” Wills pointed out, adding that changes could result in significant revenue increases.
And she thinks the Waterfront Seasonal Pass will be an easy sell.
Good from Victoria Day through Thanksgiving, it lets you pay one time on-line, and your license plate is registered – no need to print out a paper pass. Your payment entitles you to register two license numbers so, if you live in a waterfront-paid-parking zone, you don't have to worry which car you leave parked on the street and which car goes in your driveway. And you can change the registered license plate at any time, so you can ensure that a visitor's car is not ticketed.
“Twenty or thirty dollars pays for the whole season and gets you on-street parking anywhere within the waterfront area,” she said.
