The next time you are fumbling with change to pay for parking on a downtown Victoria street, remember that if you were a Central Saanich municipal councillor, you鈥檇 be able to park in that spot all day for free.
Councillors from all the Greater Victoria municipalities as well as Gulf Islands officials, First Nations leaders, MPs and MLAs can get free parking passes funded by the generous, if unwitting, taxpayers of Victoria. So far, 70 municipal politicians have taken up the offer.
The facts about the freebies came to light when Coun. Shellie Gudgeon tried to get her colleagues on Victoria council to give up their own free street-parking passes for the duration of the city鈥檚 six-month parking review.
Gudgeon thinks her fellow councillors would focus on the issues more clearly if they could feel the pain the rest of us experience when trying to park downtown. Unfortunately, on Thursday, her fellow councillors said no.
The on-street passes are given to councillors and to some non-union and union staff who need them for city business. City managers can buy parkade passes and the city covers 80 per cent of the cost.
The passes for city officials make sense in business terms because councillors and staff would claim back money spent on parking anyway, as employees of most businesses do. However, employees of other businesses aren鈥檛 able to park for as long as they want without having to plug pay stations. That鈥檚 a big difference in outlook.
One truth of human nature is that other people鈥檚 pain is never as real as the pain we feel ourselves. Letters, phone calls and public hearings will not focus the issue as clearly as sitting in a doctor鈥檚 office waiting for a delayed appointment, realizing your parking time is going to run out and knowing you can鈥檛 get back to plug in more money.
Politicians don鈥檛 have to share the pain of all their constituents on every issue; they don鈥檛 have to spend nights in a homeless shelter. But parking is one area where they could benefit from feeling the reality experienced by the voters, at least for a little while. While their cars are parked for free, they are making decisions on things like transit, which they don鈥檛 have to use, putting them further out of touch.
The councillors鈥� passes are a barrier between them and ordinary people. They reinforce the perception that most of us are shovelling coal in the engine room while our political leaders are sunning themselves on the top deck.
Coun. Chris Coleman says councillors use their passes to make sure they are not late for meetings or other city business.
Is that business any more important than the business of a sales rep who is going to lose a crucial deal if a parking spot doesn鈥檛 open up right away? Is the sales rep鈥檚 business less important than the shopping trip of the Sidney or Colwood councillor who is hogging that needed parking spot for free?
It鈥檚 appropriate to continue parkade passes for mayors and others who come downtown for Capital Regional District meetings, but it strains credulity to believe that all those 70 street passes are being used for municipal business. If they are, they are subsidies to the municipalities.
Gudgeon鈥檚 motion is dead, but councillors can still fix one part of the pass program: They can vote to get rid of the free ride for other politicians.
