President Mike Bola attending the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting today as a delegate to speak about the ongoing issues with Clayton’s parking, the usage of the RF-10 lot layout and a recommendation on how to implement permit parking. With regards to RF-10 layouts, Mr. Bola recommended to the committee that any new RF-10 houses be built with 6 car parking spots to reduce the number of potential cars being parked on the city streets. The layout would allow two cars in the garage, two cars in the full driveway behind the garage and then two cars parked in tandem along the side of the garage which would be automatically created by having the full driveway. Mr. Bola was informed by the committee that research was done to obtain information on how other municipalities handled permit parking if one was implemented and the result was that most parking permits were for residents vs commercial vehicles and not resident vs. resident as in the case for East Clayton. Mr. Bola presented a possible permit parking solution based on the feedback received from the East Clayton residents and the Chair, Councillor Tom Gill asked the Transportation Manager to review it and come back with a response for the May 2014 meeting to see if it could be implemented. The Committee also indicated that after during a further review of East Clayton’s residential streets, they will be considering the option of implementing queuing traffic so instead of having one-sided street parking, there would be double-sided street parking which should increase the on-street parking by 200+ and they also advised that they are in the process of possibly setting up an agreement with the school district to allow the residents/guests to park in the school parking lot even though it may not be practical for everyone who does not live nearby. Furthermore, the request to install “No Parking” signs in every back lane was denied and the staff would like residents to file complaints with regards to parking violations. Mr. Bola disagreed with this and later spoke to one of the staff members to see if they would reconsider it but wasn’t given a concrete decision. Mr. Bola will speak to the Chair directly to see if this decision can be overridden. Bylaws has advised that secondary suite enforcement is in full force and letters have gone out to houses for which they received complaints about and which the Cloverdale Community Association forwarded on behalf of the residents. After the inspection, fines will be assessed against the homeowners if multiple suites are found. The Chair also asked Bylaws to review the parking fines as they seem to low and do not prevent abusers from reoffending again. There might be a substantial increase to the parking fine which could deter parking violators. Next update will be in May 2014.
