Stouffville puts residential parking pilot on hold after complaints

Yorkregion.com
Aug. 2, 2017
By Simon Martin

Stouffville's downtown parking program is the problem that won't go away. The bylaw which came into place April 1 required residents to purchase on-street parking permits if they choose to park their vehicle on the street for longer than three hours.

Let's just say the residents of Whitchurch-Stouffville didn't take kindly to the change and gave council an earful. At a council last month members of council made clear they needed to find new solutions to the parking issue.

"The pilot is not working. The plane has crashed. I think we should go back and having public consultation," Ward 6 Coun. Rob Hargrave said.

Chief among the complaints is nobody really understood the new bylaw.

"This is the number one problem. People ask what are the rules and I can't tell them. We really don't know what we are doing," Ward 4 Coun. Rick Upton said.

Mayor Justin Altmann said council was trying to solve an issue that had been punted down the road too many times by previous councils. "We are kind of like a couple of Albert Einsteins up here working with a real hard and difficult mathematical or scientific equation because there are so many different variables we can throw into this," he said. "It did take an equation almost 12 years to be solved."

Council directed staff to suspend enforcement of the three-hour limit on residential streets as they figure out how to best move forward with the program. The town will still enforce the three-hour limit in the downtown municipal lots and on Main Street from Ninth Line to 120 metres of Park Drive. Street near the GO station will also still be enforced including Edward Street, Albert Street, William Street, Harold Avenue, Rupert Avenue and Second Street.

If parking for less than three hours, parking is free and a permit is not required.

But for those planning to park for longer, permits are available to purchase from the town.

The bylaw is enforced 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on all town streets and parking lots.