THUNDER BAY – The City of Thunder Bay made on-street parking free in late March, in a move intended to support businesses still operating through the COVID-19 pandemic. Now one city councillor is pushing the city to take the same step with its two downtown parkades.
Coun. Aldo Ruberto says eliminating parkade fees would help frontline workers, including those working at St. Joseph’s hospital on Algoma Street, who often use the city’s north-end parkade. He notes the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre made its own parking free during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People contacted me and [asked], the hospital’s doing this, why aren’t you doing this?” he says. “And, honestly, I didn’t really have a good answer.”
A motion on the issue from Ruberto will be considered at Monday’s council meeting. If passed, it would direct the city’s Parking Authority to report back to council the following week on the impact of temporarily removing parkade fees, which run to $6 daily, $59 monthly, or $649 per year.
Ruberto says he brought the idea to the Parking Authority weeks ago, but it had not gained any traction. The authority may be leery of further lost revenues, he says – the city expects it to lose around $280,000 due to the pandemic by the end of May. But Ruberto believes the extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
“I know that the city’s going to lose money,” he acknowledges. “We’re losing money in a lot of ways, but these are tough times and all government levels have stepped up – the province, the feds, they’re losing a ton of money, but they understand during this time period we’re trying to help everybody as much as possible where we can.”
“This is like a token to say thank you for what you’re doing, here’s a small leeway for a couple of months, until this pandemic’s over.”
