My friend paid $3.00 for parking at the Museum in Kelowna but the ticket meter’s total was for $2.50. I was surprised that she was losing .50 cents.
“You know some meters in Kelowna are like this one, where they don’t give change back. I wonder what the city does with all that extra money? ” my friend Maria asked.
I started thinking about that. I called the City of Kelowna’s Parking Coordinator, Andrew Wilson today to get some information about where the accumulation of funds go from all the parking meters that keep the change. I’m glad I talked to him, it put to rest some misgivings for me.
“The department isn’t funded under taxation, to build parking structures, we rely on reserves. The extra monies that we accumulate goes towards the reserve funds and then used towards the purchase of land, and maintain the city parking areas. There are different ways one can pay for convenience, there is the pay by phone app where you can be anywhere and pay for extra time on your parking meter or there is also the credit card option,” said Wilson.
I don’t park much downtown, and if I do, I usually pay at the parkade or I usually park after 5 PM or on holidays when I am in Kelowna. Now that I am more informed, I can easily download the ‘pay by phone’ App on my phone for convenience.
When I looked further into what the city has for Kelowna’s parking structure on this particular issue, I found a document that is online called, ‘City of Kelowna Parking Policy Framework’, this was a final report dated on March of 2013. One of the goals the city mentioned in the document was to reduce transportation demands while ensuring adequate parking to support businesses. The other goal was to reduce automobile traffic to support Kelowna and the community. (31)
You can also take a peek by clicking the below link, titled ‘Parking Policy framework’, page 27 where the city shows how much parking revenue was made.
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