City Needs All The Fines It Can Get: THE VOTER
In their current municipal fiscal situation, the city must grab money anywhere it can. The snow parking ban isn’t its first insupportable cash cow and, sadly, it won’t be the last.
Will the city refund all the parking fees it accepted to let you park and feed a meter in what city officials, without on-site notice, made a no-parking space? Surely by offering the space and accepting your money, the city created a binding contract with you for the use of that space for the time specified.
It defies logic that the ban covers streets that are already clear of snow. Bylaws, like all other laws, should be created and enforced to correct and control a problem. If the problem the bylaw meant to correct no longer exists, the bylaw should not apply. There is also the possibility of including exceptions in the bylaw or expecting bylaw officers to use their discretion when writing out a ticket.
This reminds me of the nonsense we saw during the pandemic when teens were being ticketed for shooting baskets by themselves in city parks.
Bylaw officers need to use common sense when applying the law. Aside from anything else, when they’re busy writing ridiculous tickets, they aren’t doing the useful work of helping snow removal to happen, Deploy your resources where they’ll have some practical purpose not where the vehicle is not hindering snow removal.
The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.
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Perhaps the Ottawa by-law department simply has too many employees. Rather than pay members of the group to sit and do nothing, the city has chosen instead to have them visible, out on the streets, appearing to be doing “something”.