Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:49 on 2020-02-06 Permalink Reply  

• Chris 08:58 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Aawww, they’ve lost a taxpayer subsidy and are upset. Cry me a river.

• Kate 08:59 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Nonetheless, Chris, Outremont could easily adjust the rule: if someone can show that they work full time in the borough maybe they should be allowed a vignette. Outremont doesn’t have so many big workplaces that this would make a serious dent in revenues.

• Ian 08:59 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Easy to be smug when it doesn’t affect you, Chris.

  Sounds like they were only talking to teachers with permanent postings who could ask for a transfer.

  if you work for a school board, you are not posted to a specific school until you have seniority, so you can be posted to any school within that school board. You don’t get to choose, you are assigned. That’s why schools in the Plateau all have parking lots. Up until now, Outremont schools didn’t have to so if you get posted to an Outremont school or, as happens for some, get posted to more than one school, you will now have to pay for parking.

  Listening to CBC radio earlier today they said Tomlinson’s response was that the school boards had lots of property so they should be able to figure out employee parking on their own. Sounds a bit arrogant to me.
  This of course does not take into consideration that many of the schools in Outremont are independent or private schools, and in any case all schools planned out their facilities with the expectation that they would not have to include parking, and certainly won’t be able to acquire parking within one year as anyone who has ever dealt with school budgets and planning knows.

• Ian 09:10 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Worth noting Outremont’s school board is Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys.
  The territory is vast, including most of the entire western half of the island from Lasalle to VSL, from Outremont to Pierrefonds.

  See page 7 of this pdf – http://autisme-montreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/R%C3%A9seau-scolaire-public-et-priv%C3%A9-Mtl-janvier-2016.pdf

  As a new teacher in that board, you could be posted to any of those areas, most of which do not charge for parking, and given the immensity of the school board a car is pretty much a given. Some school psychologists are posted to 5 different schools a week, for instance.

• Chris 09:19 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Kate, of course they could, but they shouldn’t. If you use a thing, you should pay for it. Especially a thing with massive catastrophic environmental externalities. They are using public space. Their use is a lost opportunity cost. That public space could be used for other things if it wasn’t for parking: bigger sidewalks, bike lanes, green space, etc. etc. The very least we must do is charge for the use of the space. We’ve been conditioned to think free/cheap parking is some kind of god-given right. No one should get parking subsidies. Do we give teachers bus pass subsidies? No. But that’d be preferable. A year of bus passes is about $1000, if we’re going to subsidize them, give them free bus passes instead.

• Douglas 09:41 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Chris hates people that have cars so much that even teachers on not so great salaries deserve to be punished because God forbid they use a car.

  If we charge cars just because they use public space like Chris said, Chris should be ok charging bikes for their use of public space too. No free pass he said.

  Bike lane? Start charging for that!

• Tim 10:41 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  I have a lot of sympathy for the educatrices at my daycare who have to find $1200 after tax. They probably only make $30k-$35k a year and none of them can afford to live in Outremont.

  Hardline (and unsympathetic) views, such as Chris’s, will only serve to stigmatize and ostracize those who cannot meet the lofty objectives of the pious and Good environmentalists.

• fliflipoune 11:13 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Il n’y a aucune obligation morale de subventionner à 100% le stationnement. On ne le fait pas pour le transport en commun, beaucoup plus désirable.
  La voiture est le mode de transport le plus luxueux et cher autant pour l’individu et pour la société. Si celle-ci a le devoir d’être subventionnée pour aider les travailleurs, on devrait carrément payer le monde à prendre l’autobus. Simple justice sociale et fiscale.
  En passant, être pro-environnement, ce n’est pas une religion, c’est le gros bon sens. Le monde qui ne font aucun effort sont toujours les premiers à ridiculiser les gens qui font, objectivement, la bonne chose. Oui, faire attention à l’environnement c’est mieux. C’est plus désirable, c’est la simple et concrète réalité.

• Spi 11:13 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  I have a lot more sympathy for the childcare workers that earn substantially less and are much less mobile career-wise than the teachers. Is it unfair to just all of a sudden incur a $900 additional cost to work (because teachers aren’t teaching 12 months a year)? Absolutely. It’s not like the teachers lost their jobs and won’t be able to find a new one, these are decisions they’ve made for themselves based on changing circumstances. I personally know 2-3 teachers that live in Mile-End and work for CSMB they would be more than ecstatic to take a position at any of the Outremont schools, being able to walk to work instead of the ridiculous public transit commutes to VSL or having to drive.

• Tim 12:07 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  @fliflipone: while there is no moral obligation to subsidize parking, the city is taking away something from people without providing anything in return. I believe that there is an obligation to provide something in return for people who are currently working in the area; some type of grandfather (or grandparent if I wanted to be gender neural) clause. If you start working in Outremont this year, you aren’t eligible for this clause so you will have to balance out for yourself whether you can pay for parking before you accept the job.

  Feel free to make the clause income based so that “high rollers” like teachers making $60k or more aren’t eligible.

• qatzelok 12:44 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  I’ve been teaching in St-Michel for 10 years, and always to to work on bike or metro. Perhaps there will be a job-opening for someone like me who is more dedicated to teaching than they are to parking their cars within child-killing distance of the school they have been assigned to.

• Ian 14:16 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  If you’ve been working there 10 years, you have had lots of time to plan your commute and figure everything out. I hope for your sake some smug city fonctionnaire doesn’t mess that up for you as a matter of principle and then casually dismiss your concerns out of hand with some “let them eat cake” style advice.

• Ian 14:22 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  @Spi the school board covers half the island, what makes you so certain these Outremont teachers actually live anywhere near Outremont? As far as career mobility or whatever I don’t think you understand how teaching works, if you work for a school board you don’t get to decide what school you teach at – how do you know those teachers assigned to the Outremont schools aren’t coming in from VSL or Pierrefonds?

• Jf 14:35 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  Le maire Tomlinson préfère voir un espace de parking libre plutôt que d assurer la pérennité d’une éducation de qualité pour notre future génération ! Quel manque de vision pour nos enfants, quel manque de jugement pour nos commerces aussi, quel manque de tout il est un contributeur négatif de valeur ajoutée pour nos citoyens, notre province et notre pays

• Dominic 17:43 on 2020-02-06 Permalink

  How far is “child-killing distance” exactly? Asking for a friend.

• qatzelok 08:42 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  At one of the schools where I taught, the bike path surrounding the school is covered with parents in parked SUVs, waiting for their kids to drive home. Virtually no kids bike to that school because ‘it’s too dangerous.’ Teaching obese children whose parents are waiting for them in SUVs each day, to drive 10 blocks….

  And also, ‘modeling’ adult behavior is something else that teachers do. So abandonding your kids because you can’t park for free anymore… is a less than ideal way to model behaviors.

• Kate 09:14 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  “Modeling” is a silly idea. Kids don’t see teachers’ lives the way another adult does. A teacher’s there, and then they’re gone. Kid doesn’t know why. Likes the new teacher a bit more or a bit less and it doesn’t matter.

• jeather 09:45 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  Everyone in their own individual car could be solved a bit by better schoolbus systems and allowing carpooling.

• Raymond Lutz 10:12 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  ah ah ah… elle se bidonne bien, la bourgeoisie, à voir les prolos se battrent entre eux pour garder les quelques privilèges qu’elle leur a octroyés mais qui progressivement disparaissent, faute de ressources éternelles. C’est comme Macron qui a tenté (en vain) de dresser les cheminots contre les profs contre les avocats contre les infirmiers et les pompiers. La fin est (enfin) proche.

• Ephraim 10:18 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  Kate – There are good teachers and bad teachers. And while as children, they may not understand, the adults and adult students do. My mother had arguments with my grade 2 teacher because I was much further advanced in that class than the rest and already understood fractions. When I taught, the students were always there when I started class… one of the other teachers seldom had half the class attend.

• Raymond Lutz 10:28 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  Know how to spot bad teachers! (hint: they’re dogmatic)

• Raymond Lutz 10:29 on 2020-02-07 Permalink

  ah crap… my image html tag didn’t pass, ruining my joke 😎

  https://i2.wp.com/craphound.com/images/canadairredscare.jpg