Southwest Scarborough residents frustrated by inconsistent permit parking rules

By AMARACHI AMADIKE

Toronto residents living east of Victoria Park Avenue are becoming increasingly frustrated with what they are describing as unfair treatment when it comes to permit parking.

With community members waking up to fines on a consistent basis for parking on the street, they are urging officials to implement parking rules that are on par with the rest of the city.

“I heard that people are frustrated and upset – they feel targeted because the suburbs (Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York) are the last areas of post-amalgamation Toronto left without a holistic parking strategy,” said Scarborough Southwest Councillor Parthi Kandavel in an email statement to Beach Metro Community News.

Almost three decades ago, prior to Toronto’s amalgamation, Scarborough, as well as East York, North York, Etobicoke, York and the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto, were their own municipalities with each having its own individual set of parking laws and enforcement.

Post-amalgamation, councillors have failed to create a strategy that sees all areas of the city functioning under the same set of rules. Megacity amalgamation officially started on Jan. 1, 1998.

“As our city grows, this is one of the challenges we face. Families are growing, private garages are expensive, and driveways are not an option for most,” said Kandavel.

“These are all realities incompatible with the current three-hour parking bylaw in Scarborough, especially in the denser parts of my ward closer to the Beaches. These realities are incompatible with the current three-hour parking bylaw in Scarborough.”

Kandavel said that because residents in Scarborough are more car-dependent, the City of Toronto must do something to support east-end families and make their daily lives more efficient.

As of Aug. 1, fines for parking without paying at a meter increased from $30 to $50. That’s a hike many Scarborough residents said they are feeling as they are forced to cut costs in order to keep up with fines as a result of a lack of permit parking on local streets.

Ron Parkinson, a Scarborough resident and Founder of Scarborough United Neighbourhoods (SUN), was in attendance at a recent community meeting to discuss the permit parking issue on Blantyre Avenue which is just one block east of Victoria Park Avenue.

According to Parkinson, there were a few residents who revealed that parking tickets have become a frequent expense that they are forced to consider when doing their monthly budgeting.

“I heard comments about (spending) $400 in two months on parking tickets,” said Parkinson.

He said a Blantyre Avenue resident spoke at the meeting about plans to sell her house because the amount of parking tickets she was getting was unsustainable.

Another Scarborough resident, Kevin Rupasinghe, told Beach Metro Community News that although he is not a parking advocate and would rather see a sustainable system of transportation, “in the short term”, councillors must acknowledge that people in Scarborough are relying on their cars due to a lack of other options.

“There’s no mechanism for people to be able to get on-street parking which is not the case west of Victoria Park,” said Rupasinghe. “We have a different set of rules even though we are one city.”

He said that frustrations are high among residents because “a lot of people want to pay the city” and are happy to follow the process, however, the process simply does not exist for many Scarborough neighbourhoods.

The process for residents to get permit parking includes residents of individual streets submitting a petition requesting an official poll from the City Clerk about allowing it.

The City Clerk then administers an official poll to residents on whether or not to allow permit parking. If enough residents take part in the poll and vote in favour of street parking, the process is then forwarded to Toronto Council which makes the final decision.

“It’s a really crazy multi-step process and it only happens if the councillor is willing to bring something forward to start that process,” said Rupasinghe. “It’s really set up in a way that it does not happen very often.”

Only a few streets in Scarborough have permit parking as a result of a City Clerk’s poll. However, some areas in Scarborough are simply not permitted to embark on this process at all.

“It fundamentally comes down to fairness,” said Rupasinghe. “It’s not fair to have a different set of rules for different parts of the city. If we’re one city, the rules should be applied the same.”