Luke Dufour Ward 2

First off, I'd like to say that metered parking on Queen St is a waste of resources and I've been saying that for 5 years now. The reason a motion to Council to pull them out would not pass, is because $600K has been spent on those meters in the past 4 years and more money would need to be spent to pull them out. That is a venture for a later date IMO. This proposal is to fix a lack of enforcement City-wide of parking by-laws. There is currently little to no enforcement of pa...rking by-laws outside of the Downtown area Mon-Fri 8-4:30. It is a great frustration to those merchants on Queen who wish to stay open in the evening but have their spots taken up by Downtown residential tenants. Even during the day, it is currently cheaper for a hypothetical person to park all day on Queen illegally and pay the fine than it is to pay the meter. To add to this absurdity, the cost of enforcing that fine isn’t even recaptured by the fine amount. It’s passed on directly to all taxpayers, the vast majority of whom are parking legally. By bringing our fines in line with the rest of the Province, we open up some other possibilities for parking by-law enforcement that do not cost law-abiding citizens money. Also if our cheap Downtown parking fines were such an attractant to the Downtown, why are we in this state to begin with? This past week at the Budget meeting, Council passed $50K for new wayfinding signage, as per the Brooks reccomendations and $260K for the Downtown Community Improvement Program which will give grants directly to the merchants who have been doing the hard work of improving Downtown. One final point is that this our parking by-laws are City wide, and outside of the Downtown we currently have NO enforcement. It’s a problem for snow removal, it’s a problem for those who try to navigate narrow streets and it’s time we took a political hit to solve it. This report is a result of good work on the part of staff but it is also partly the outworking of two of the first complaints that I had received even before I was sworn in as a Councillor. I'm proud to have taken appropriate action to address these complaints in a responsible fashion and at no cost to the by-law abiding taxpayer!

The 2016 motion clearly stated that the SSMPL Board was to ensure a presence at the Northern Community Center. The Board took this to mean a smaller branch footprint but still a serviceable branch with shelves, staff and programming. The only other alternative to having a branch without staff and shelves is to have a machine that holds your online reservations so you can pick them up at Korah. If you have opinions about this, today is the day to share them with your member of Council.

Hello everyone, Just an update as warmer temperatures are forecast for Sunday/Monday which has our staff scrapping roads and cutting ice pack for most of the weekend. For streets that are being cut, a loader will be following to clear driveways. We are also continuing to remove snow banks throughout the City. Forecasts are conflicting between rain and snow. Should it snow, our forces will be responding to a regular snow event and driveways will not be cleared as a result.... From PWT