You can park for three hours in downtown Prince George for free, (instituted 2 1/2 years ago) however, some members of the public have found that there’s a hitch to that.
Matt Porteous said he was delivering packages downtown and stopped off at the Black Clover at 9:00am for about ten minutes, he returned at 3:30pm and parked for an hour, and received a $50.00 ticket for parking in excess of three hours.
The City mandates that on certain downtown streets, you can’t park for more than three hours, Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, but, spokesperson for the City Michael Kellett says that rule is misunderstood by some.
“It’s not a total of three hours. It’s really just the clock starts and you have three hours,” said Kellett.
“If you come downtown at nine o’clock for two minutes, leave, and come back at two o’clock, we encourage you to use off street parking, otherwise, you risk having your license plate scanned and getting a ticket.”
The whole point of the system, he said, is to get people to start using off street parking.
Porteous made a facebook post about the ticket after it happened, tagging councillors Brian Skakun and Frank Everitt.
Since that post, he’s heard from 40-50 people who’ve experienced similar issues, and while you can dispute a ticket with the City, he said that just isn’t fair.
“The problem with the system is that they know people like me are going to get hit multiple times with this, and then they put the onus on us to prove that we’re innocent. That totally goes against our Charter of Rights, it’s innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent.”
“If you have a system that is constantly putting innocent people in a position that they have to fight to prove that innocence, then it’s a system that needs to be fixed,” said Porteous.
According to him, getting an off street parking permit for downtown also isn’t a viable option because the spaces set out are blocks away from where he’s delivering hundreds of pounds of boxes.
“Especially people who are working like me. I’m in and out of liquor stores, restaurants and pubs all day long. There aren’t options like that in 90% of those places. It’s an absolute joke that they think something like that is going to work for the regular citizen.”
Kellett said anyone who has an issue with the parking regulations is encouraged to contact the City.
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