Vaughan homeowner ticked off over city's ticketing policies

Yorkregion.com
July 31, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

The city is being heavy-handed when it comes to enforcing the rules of the road in at least one Maple neighbourhood, a longtime resident claims.

Pat Friel has lived on Emmitt Road - a side street just east of Jane Street, directly across the road from Canada’s Wonderland - for about 13 years.

Friel says he’s received about  10 parking tickets, mostly for violating the city’s three-hour, on-street parking limit, in the last couple of years.

While he understands the city had to crack down on amusement park-goers who were parking their vehicles in his neighbourhood to avoid paying to park at Wonderland, Friel says it’s gone too far.

He said it’s now uncommon for Wonderland visitors to park on his street, yet the city’s enforcement officers still come by daily to issue tickets.

“Seven days a week, we can’t park on the street,” the 61-year-old father of three said. “They’re taking away from my enjoyment of living. I can’t have anybody over.”

Friel said he contacted Maple/Kleinburg Councillor Marilyn Iafrate’s office to complain about the ongoing enforcement and to ask if the city would issue special parking permits for the residents.

“They wanted no part of that,” said Friel, who works as a TTC driver. “It’s not hard for them to do... I’d even pay for it.”

Friel’s frustration reached a boiling point last week.

He’s having a swimming pool put in and two trucks from the company he hired to do the work were ticketed for parking on the street for more than three hours.

Friel called parking enforcement and was told he can get free parking permits for the work trucks to park on his street, but they’re only valid for nine consecutive days and he can only apply once per year.

When he explained it was going to take 21 days to install the pool, Friel said, he was told nine days was the maximum allowed.

Friel then called the mayor’s office to complain and says he eventually got approval for a 21-day permit.

After arriving home from picking up the permits at city hall, Friel said, he parked on the street and dashed inside for a few minutes.

When he came back outside to get his car, Friel discovered he’d been slapped with a ticket – this time for interfering with movement of traffic.

Fed up, Friel hung a bedsheet in front of his garage with a spray-painted message reading: Councillor Marilyn Iafrate Stop Ticketing Emmitt Rd. 7 Days a week.

“I’m an easy going guy,” he said. “I like to get along with everybody.  I don’t complain, but I’ve gone the other way now.”

Iafrate said last year the city and Canada’s Wonderland were inundated with calls from residents in that area complaining about amusement park visitors parking on their streets.

That prompted the city to erect large signs in the area reminding people there is a three-hour parking limit, Iafrate said. 

And, she added, the city’s bylaw department decided to ramp up enforcement, especially on weekends.

“That’s all we did,” Iafrate said. “We put up signs then bylaw would take it upon itself to do monitoring, particularly on peak weekends, when they knew that Canada’s Wonderland is extremely busy. It’s not anything exceptional for anybody, it’s just maintaining the current bylaw.”

Iafrate said she hasn’t received any complaints about Wonderland patrons parking in the area this year, but added that she doesn’t get involved with telling the bylaw department how to do its job.

“I don’t control bylaw and it would be an abuse of my position if I told them how to do their work,” she said. “Whether I told them to go out there and increase their work or decrease it. They’re supposed to be independent.”

As for providing an exemption to the three-hour parking limit for residents, she said that’s not an option

“What I have always been told is a bylaw applies to everybody,” she said. “Legally, you can’t go down a street and pick and choose who you apply it to, that’s the problem. “

Gus Michaels, Vaughan’s director of bylaw and compliance, echoed that statement.

“The reality is the majority of the unlawful parking was determined not to be residents, but that doesn’t mean that we would skip over a resident’s vehicle, and only tag visitors,” he said. “Three hours applies across the board. It’s actually a regulatory requirement under the parking bylaw, citywide. It’s not unique to this area, it’s every street save and except where they’re signed otherwise.“

Michaels confirmed that the number of parking tickets handed out on Emmitt Road has decreased significantly - from 67 last year to 22 this year - but, he added, other residents in the area are not calling to complain about getting tickets.

“It’s hard to make everybody happy, but our collective interest is the public at large,” he said. “So one person is displeased and a lot of other residents are very pleased with the attention, given that the parking has substantially lessened.”