City faces some lean years
Montreal’s economy is facing some lean years and the city administration is being pressed to present a budget acknowledging this. Greedy bastards keep making demands, though, from Peter Sergakis demanding reduced taxes to the Chamber of Commerce asking for trams.
Kevin 09:45 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
The official recommendation is to cut spending by $125 million, to postpone multiple projects, and to *properly* solicit the public in French and English for ideas.
dwgs 10:26 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
Sergakis can take a flying f@#k at a rolling donut. And seeing as this is the third time this week that I have seen local media in both languages dutifully promoting his talking points they can follow him.
Ephraim 10:27 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
First thought… how is the chamber of commerce planning on ripping off the city with these trams? There must be some way that they figured this out, because they never do anything that isn’t beneficial to themselves at the city’s purse strings.
The city should look at how opening up certain data and changing certain fee structures would allow it to live more lean. For example, having a way that citizens can verify permits for temporary street blockages. For example “no parking” signs having a requirement to have the permit listed and citizens having the ability to validate the permit. The price of the permit should relate to the number of spaces and the number of days that they need. The fines should therefore be exponential for putting up a sign without a permit and/or taking more space than you paid for, or extra days. In this way, the city would be collecting money from those using the city space while not having to tax businesses or citizens who aren’t impacting the city space.
Another way the city could raise money is by asking employees for innovations that would save money and offer them up to 50% of the first year’s savings. They have an interest in showing the city how it could save money and the city saves 50% on the first year but keeps on saving on the years after that.
They could also in some areas where there are needs for courier companies to deliver, create 15 minute parking ares. The fine for parking beyond 15 minutes without a permit should be astronomical. But they can sell permits to courier companies to use those spots.
They could also finally computerize the ticket system for parking tickets. Print the tickets rather than make 2 hand copies that likely need to be added into a computer later anyway. The data from which could lead the city to look at where they need to go more often and where they don’t need to go. The GPS data and parking ticket data would likely help increase income.
Kevin 11:22 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
Sorry, left out that’s the official recommendation from the city’s own finance committee.
Ian 12:10 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
I suspect a good portion of the revenue could simply be made up by enforcing traffic laws. Fining delivery trucks for idling, traffic & speeding violations, parking in bike lanes, jaywalking, riding bikes on sidewalks…
Plus if the laws were consistently and rigorously enforced I suspect we would all benefit from a far more liveable city as people would stop thinking it’s everyone for themselves, trying to get away with whatever they can.
Michael Black 12:30 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
But if they ticketed more, people would complain that it was a cash grab.
But yes, some of the benefits of driving seem derived from law breaking. I don’t care about expired parking meters, but I care a lot about cars parking too close to intersections, or triple parking or parking in bus stops or on the sidewalk. If that “ease” wasn’t there, some might think twice about taking the car for things that could be done by walking.
mare 15:25 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
@Ephraim “They could also finally computerize the ticket system for parking tickets. Print the tickets rather than make 2 hand copies that likely need to be added into a computer later anyway.”
As far as I know that’s already been done for years. At least by the “green onions” who give “no parking during street cleaning” tickets. Those have to be written fast in order to keep up with the cleaning machine.
BTW Probably because of people work from home and forgetting to move their car, but I’ve the impression they write a lot more tickets than before.
Ian 18:23 on 2020-09-17 Permalink
The only parking tickets I’ve ever had are for that precise thing and yeah mine have always been computerized. I sometimes lose track of what day it is, especially this year. To be fair I’ve only had a car for a few years so they may still write them out by hand for other kinds of violations, I have no idea.
@Michael Black I would LOVE to see the parking too close to intersections rule enforced. That is SUCH a hazard and people seem to do it with impunity all over town. Another thing I would love to see is somebody actually ticketing cars and bicycles for blowing through crosswalks. When you yell at them, drivers give you the finger, cyclists just ignore you. So many accidents in Mile End, it’s crazy – nobody pays attention, everyone is impatient. Droves of kids cross at the crosswalks on their way to schools every morning.
nau 08:46 on 2020-09-18 Permalink
Why just fiddle with parking around the edges? If the city needs revenue, it should start charging everywhere for the portion of the street that it constructs, maintains and snow-clears simply so a subset of its citizens can store their private property for free. That should bring in enough revenue it could even offer free short-duration parking in front of merchants’ establishments to help them out.
Kevin 10:12 on 2020-09-18 Permalink
@nau
Thank you for my Friday laugh!
nau 09:55 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
No thanks to you for your usual empty snark.
Ian 16:56 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
You’re absolutely right, nau. The city should install meters on everyone and charge them for everything, that’s clearly a great solution. I mean after all if everyone stopped having cars we’d still need the roads for trucks and bicycle paths presumably, so the brunt of taxation would fall on them – so we need to measure and tax that too so the tax infrastructure is in place. Then of course those pedestrians with their expensive sidewalks, it only makes sense that those who walk more should pay more. Why stop there? We could water meters, maybe a special space tax for taller people, charge people bus fare based on their weight, why stop there, let’s tax people on how much they poop in grams so they can pay for the sewage system!
I mean, now that it’s clear that this is a serious and well thought out idea I think we should really explore it.
MarcG 19:38 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
Essay question (~500 words): Is the internet incapable of producing civil discourse? If so, for what reasons? To what extent do you consider this a frustrating and horrible thing?
Ian 21:33 on 2020-09-19 Permalink
Take it as you will, I was engaging in critical discourse in the time-honoured tradition of satire along the lines of “A Modest Proposal”. If you don’t think that’s civil, well, as Emma Goldman said, “if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution”.