Editor: To park or not to park, that is the question.
I was at our excellent downtown market the other Thursday and I couldn’t help noticing that the parking for this event has become an issue.
The market vendors and their staff arrive early to set up their stalls and then park their vehicles in the adjacent free parking lot. When tourists and locals arrive a little later, most have to park on adjacent roads, all of which are two-hour zones.
The new bylaw officer arrives just before lunch in his new Town of Canmore peace officer truck, parking chalk in hand, and proceeds to mark every vehicle in the entire downtown, presumably to hand out tickets when their allotted two hours has expired – welcome to Canmore.
So what has been done to provide more parking? We have been collecting money from downtown businesses for years.
A parking in lieu tax. How much have we collected to date? Where is the money now? How many additional parking stalls has this tax provided?
I asked our mayor the other day why we have not demolished the old house next to the Canmore Place building and added another 20 or 30 parking stalls.
This lot was purchased by the town from Cascade Insurance years ago ... for parking. I was told “that property, is in the parking inventory.”
This is like the food bank telling the hungry, “we can’t give you any food because it’s in the food inventory.”
Am I missing something, or is this completely stupid?
Stan Walker,
Canmore
