Sault Ste. Marie mayor: ‘Our community is addicted to parking’

You have a problem, Sault Ste. Marie.

You've become addicted to free parking and you need to get yourself rehabbed, cleansed of your silly belief that you should be able to park your car anywhere you want without paying for the privilege.

So says Mayor Matthew Shoemaker.

"Our community is addicted to parking," Shoemaker said at this week's city council meeting.

"We saw that several meetings ago when... much of council debated the issue of selling parking passes for over an hour," the mayor said.

"We look to other communities for what they're doing on addiction management. We look to other communities for how they're doing best practices on capital projects, what they're doing in the tourism sector.

"But when it comes to best practices on parking, we ignore that nearly every other public sector institution in this community and our comparator municipalities, is charging for parking. We ignore that fact completely."

Shoemaker was speaking as his third attempt in six years to charge municipal employees for parking was defeated by fellow council members. 

A Shoemaker-penned resolution, moved by Ward 3 Coun. Ron Zagordo and seconded by Ward 1's Sandra Hollingsworth, proposed that paid parking be introduced for the north and south Civic Centre parking lots effective Jan. 1, 2025.

The resolution also directed city staff to look into the possibility of expanding paid parking to other municipal parking lots as of Jan. 1, 2026.

The north and south Civic Centre lots and the 619 Bay St. parking lot would be turned into turned into two-hour free parking lots similar to other city-owned parking lots in the downtown core.

Permits would be sold to city employees, as happens in other downtown parking lots in which permits are sold, for the same price.

Visitors, part-time employees and students would all be exempt from the paid-paying per use.

Trade unions representing city workers, concerned that not a word of this change had ever been uttered in collective bargaining, vowed to fight it.

Once again, Shoemaker's idea was shot down by other members of city council.

But the mayor continued to insist the city should charge for parking at municipal facilities.

"We need to start somewhere," he said.

"We need to start the process of stemming our addiction to free parking, and this proposal gets us there in a way that treats the north Civic Centre lot and the south Civic Centre lot, the same way as Bingham lot, which is 60 feet away."

"Parking is an emotional issue, more emotional than I think there is reason to be on this issue, because we've all been to other communities where you pay for parking every time you turn around.

"Every time you go into a store, every time you go into a service centre, every time you go into a hospital, and in our community, that's the case.

"This is an issue that starts to stem the tide of giving free parking, which, as we know, is not free, and hopefully implementing a more fair system across the board," Shoemaker said.

His resolution failed, six votes to five.

Here's how your city councillors voted on starting to charge for parking at city workplaces:

• Mayor – Matthew Shoemaker: for
• Ward 1 – Sonny Spina: against
• Ward 1 – Sandra Hollingsworth: for
• Ward 2 – Luke Dufour: for 
• Ward 2 – Lisa Vezeau-Allen: against
• Ward 3 – Angela Caputo: against
• Ward 3 – Ron Zagordo: for
• Ward 4 – Marchy Bruni: against
• Ward 4 – Stephan Kinach: against
• Ward 5 – Corey Gardi: against
• Ward 5 – Matthew Scott: for