SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Business owners fed up with downtown employees occupying their customer parking spots are praising the city's overhaul of the parking metre system.

Pictured on June 1, Bubble Tea North owner Leonora Kwong's juice bar is situated between two residential homes, so there are no parking meters outside her business, which prompts drivers to park there all day, leaving no spots for her customers. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

Following requests from business owners, the city alloted $270,000 in this year's budget to replace outmoded parking meters and add additional meters in areas being filled by vehicles which park all day, making it inconvenient for downtown business patrons to find parking spots.

"This was primarily driven by merchants wanting their customers to have access to parking," Mayor Gordon Van Tighem said, adding without the meters in front of downtown businesses, "people that work downtown park all day, and everyone that wants to go shopping has to take the bus."

Susan Mercredi, owner of Top of the World Travel, says the parking meters which have been outside her business for as long as she remembers, are a valuable deterrent to all-day parkers.

"If it weren't for the meters, the spots would be taken all day," Mercredi said.

At the same time, she describes the meter system as "kind of a double-edged sword."

"The meters rotate traffic through, so the spots don't sit full all the time," Mercredi said. "But I have employees who have no choice but to park at the meter and they have to pay by the hour."

The budget is focused on replacing about 600 of the 700 meters in total across the downtown area, which are an older style K80 meter from MacKay Meters, more than 10 years old and no longer being manufactured. The older models are being replaced with the newer style Guardian meters, also from MacKay.

The older machines were becoming "increasingly unreliable," according to Van Tighem, requiring staff time for constant repairs and taking away from parking meter revenues. The newer machines have higher reliability, which the city is hoping will translate into higher parking meter revenues, in addition to the increase in revenues from increased metered areas. The meters currently bring in about $300,000 per year in revenue.

"It all contributes to the bigger pot," Van Tighem said, adding the old meters have now been replaced.

Even though parking enforcement officers are "pretty relentless with ticketing" outside his 48 Street Ragged Ass Barbers shop, James McGaughey said lack of meters just beyond the commercial complex, where businesses are mixed with residential units, attract throngs of drivers to park on the street all day.

"It's tough sometimes for customers to find parking on busier days," McGaughey said, especially on Saturdays when more people come downtown, leaving little or no parking spots in the vicinity for his customers.

Leonora Kwong, whose juice bar Bubble Tea North is positioned between two homes in the area, is tired of running away non-customers who repeatedly leave their cars in front of her store all day.

"I don't have time to watch every morning," Kwong said, adding she has raised her concern with the City. "It would be great if the city added a meter on this side."

Currently, unenforced areas downtown will be outfitted with new meters by half blocks and whole blocks as the city becomes aware of concerns, Van Tighem said, but Kwong may have to wait for more commercial development on the street, because residential areas are not being considered for meter expansion.

"So all the office workers will go and park in front of the residents," Van Tighem joked.

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