City Quietly Removes Free Parking For Out Of Province Vehicles

A long standing policy, seen as a way to increase tourist visits, has silently been removed by the City.

At Monday evening’s post Council press conference City Manager Jim Puffalt confirmed the long standing policy where out of province vehicles were not ticketed for failure to plug parking meters has been discontinued.

He was was answering questions from MJ Independent.

Although he did not know exactly when the City started issuing parking tickets to out of province vehicles for parking without paying the parking fee Puffalt said the policy was changed about two years ago.

Asked further by MJ Independent the reasoning behind the move Puffalt said it was because of the problems created by the policy itself.

“I don’t recall (when the free out of province parking policy was eliminated) I think it has been a couple of years. And again parking is parking and regardless we were finding people were parking where they shouldn’t be. Parking too close to the corner, they were causing issues and so when there was an exemption given it seemed to be that some people were taking advantage of it. And it was just causing issues Downtown.”