Joanne Menard has just one question for Penetanguishene councillors: "When will the town start enforcing the parking bylaw on Peel Street?"
Menard, who attended council's committee of the whole session Wednesday night, said she's been dealing with parking woes on Peel Street for the last three years.
"I get customer complaints almost every day because of how far they have to park," said the owner of OMG Men & Women's Fashion. "To have someone park there for four to five hours to spend money at the spa is great, but it's not just the customers that use the space, it's also tenants and employees --- that's not good."
The one-way street has a four-hour parking limit for the close to 20 spaces on Peel's east side with the opposite side designated as loading zones for the businesses in that area.
"It's just a sad issue," she said. "I can't grow my business. I have a good business, but we're always steady. I'm so proud to live here and I want the community to grow, but it can't grow if the town is not supporting the businesses."
Neighbouring business owner, Ashley McFadyen, shares some of Menard's concerns around parking on the street.
"There’s no parking directly around the business. To me, that’s a concern," said the owner of Taiden's Treehouse, who was also at the Wednesday session. "I told council the other night that we put out a customer satisfaction survey and a lot of the feedback from moms with young kids is that they’re frustrated about the parking situation. They don’t want to be on the main street with their kids or climbing up Peel Street with their kids. They’re constantly saying there’s no room to park and unload things."
The parking spots on that street are shared between business staff members, customers and apartment dwellers, said McFadyen.
"I feel a lot of the parking spaces should be available for customers, tenants, and staff," she said. "I feel the town could do a little bit better with enforcement and possibly even with creating a little bit more space."
Vincent Castano, owner of Vincent's Salon & Spa, said he knows his employees park in those spots but he can't do anything about it if they don't want to park in the lot and walk.
He said his employees feel unsafe at night walking back into the parking lot and "I'm not going to tell them otherwise."
Menard admitted that there were safety concerns before because there was overgrown bush leading to the parking lot , it wasn't lit well enough and the town wouldn't clean the stairs. But now, she said, the town has cleared the walkway, the two lamps are working and the town is taking better care of snow removal around the stairs leading down to the parking lot.
Menard said her main concern isn't that employees use the parking spaces during the day --- even though there's a parking lot 20 steps away --- there's a solution: the town enforcing the bylaw effectively.
Castano had a different solution that would see the town adding more parking spaces on the street's west side, something McFadyen doesn't believe is feasible.
"Where would trucks go if they take away the loading zones?" she asked. "I do feel the town could take a look at the parking spaces they already have and maybe make those better."
All these remedies aside, staff also presented a report to council's committee of the whole Wednesday.
Among the recommendations was a proposal for adding a 15-minute time-limit to the loading zone, examining the parking situation on Peel Street between Robert Street East and Simcoe Street, for loading zone alternatives and angle of parking, and retaining the two-hour street parking limit on Main, Simcoe, Water, Robert and Fox streets and maintain the four-hour limit on Peel Street.
"Staff has spent some time over the summer months exploring and reviewing it," said Jeff Lees, chief administrative officer. "Council did implement some changes several months ago on the Peel Street parking time limit (changing it from two hours to four)."
He said parking concerns around downtown Penetanguishene vary from user-to-user and this is something staff will continue to explore.
In response to Menard's request for increased enforcement, Lees said it's a bit difficult to focus just on parking due to limited physical resources.
"We could, of course, do more parking enforcement with more physical staff (but) parking isn't the only responsibility of bylaw," he said. "There are a number of other responsibilities that bylaw is expected to enforce and respond to."
Coun. Debbie Levy agreed with Menard's comment that it really does all boil down to enforcement, but she also agreed with Lees that enforcement isn't always cut and dried.
"We simply don’t have the resources currently to enforce on a daily basis," she said. "There are many different bylaws and there’s no doubt tremendous amount of paperwork and court appearance associated with it, so that is a complication."
Levy said it is difficult to please everybody and compromises have to be made.
"Downtown parking is always a contentious issue faced by all towns and cities," she said. "Some businesses have customers who just park briefly, others, like hairdressers and restaurants need customer parking for longer periods. A further complication is staff parking in spots that should be available for customers. Staff should be in municipal lots. That would ease so much of the conflict."
Small-town culture is such that we expect to park directly in front of our workplace or a business, said Levy.
"I’ve had business owners approach me with different needs and ideas, and I understand them all, but it’s difficult," she noted. "But we’re only hearing from business owners right now, we haven’t heard from residents yet.
"Really, in theory, everybody’s needs should be looked after, but in reality, that’s not the case," added Levy. "Our job is try to make the most amount of people happy. We want to be helpful to the business community and that means trying to please most of the people."
Other recommendations presented to committee of the whole were to develop a proposal for an overnight monthly/annual/seasonal permit system for parking downtown, a parking supply/demand study to be undertaken to count parking usage in downtown and for staff to improve wayfinding for locations of downtown parking spots.
Lees said these recommendations would need to be ratified by council before being implemented.
