News Article
Nothing Little about Job
Daniel Pearce, Simcoe Reformer
July 31, 2009
Standing at the forefront of the battle to keep parking spaces open for customers along downtown streets is Ted Little. Hired earlier this year to enforce parking bylaws after years of having virtually no one to do it, Little walks the beat in Simcoe's core five days a week.
The retired factory worker goes down every road and alley -- it takes, he says, two and a half hours to do a complete circuit -- looking for violations.
"You're caught between a rock and a hard place," he said Tuesday while patrolling Robinson Street. "You want to move people along, but the job is enforce the law."
What Little, 66, means is he has to be flexible. For example, one time he saw a car parked in a handicapped space without a permit showing in the window. He went to the nearby hair salon, inquired about the vehicle, found the owner there, and let her produce the permit.
She had forgotten to take it out of her glove compartment and put it out. The woman faced a $300 fine.
Other times he waits for people to come back to their cars and warns them instead of writing a ticket.
But the real goal for Little, who was hired by the Simcoe Business Improvement Area to do a job that used to be handled by the municipality, is to get the people who work in downtown stores and businesses to park in lots on the edge of the core rather than in front of their place of work.
They have long been blamed for clogging up parking spaces along the main streets, discouraging shoppers from using downtown.
Little uses guile to catch motorists breaking the two-hour rule for parking in the same spot.
It is, he said, a "game," and the repeat offenders know how to play it. They know when and how to move their cars to keep within the bylaw, he said.
"I have to be consistently inconsistent on where I am," Little offered as his only hint of how he battles back. It is a fight he appears to be winning, say BIA officials.
"We're seeing more spaces freed up in high traffic areas on Norfolk Street," said Peter Black, a downtown business owner and vice-chair of the BIA.
BIA executive director Deb Murphy said shoppers are telling them "I can't believe I'm getting parking out in front on the road."
The free for all in parking in downtown coincided with the demise of the former Town of Simcoe. Before 2001, the town had someone on the streets fulltime ticketing cars. Once the new county came into being, enforcement dropped to about three hours a week.
The problem is that regular bylaw enforcement became far more complicated and time consuming under the new county structure, with new rules for such things as clean yards, noise, and pools, said Chris Baird, Norfolk's manager of planning and economic development. "In the last nine years, we've had a lot more bylaws to enforce," he said. Now Little is picking up the slack in downtown.
He also acts as an ambassador, giving people directions, talking to tourists, helping the elderly get into their vehicles. "I look at my job as to keep traffic flowing," said Little, who is contracted through the Commissionaires, an organization made up of retired military and police hired by municipalities and BIAs to enforce parking.
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