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Parking questions return

Paid parking doesn’t only affect residents; tourists feel the pain too
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Sometimes, it seems that questions around parking in Penticton are never going away.

Council got into a debate — again — over parking issues this week after the Peach City Beach Cruise, a major trademark Penticton event, asked that parking enforcement look the other way when it came to participating cars parked around town during the June 23 to 25.

Their reason was simple. With participants bringing their vehicles from all over to show at the cruise, we should make sure they leave Penticton with a positive impression.

Nothing puts a damper on your weekend like a parking ticket.

Part of the council debate concerned other groups wanting the same treatment. A fair argument, since there are events year-round that would like free parking for their participants. Other events don’t feature cars — which require parking — as their main attraction to draw tourists to Penticton, but not wanting to show favouritism for one event still rings true.

The overall idea of making sure tourists leave Penticton with fond memories is a good one, instead of ‘that place with parking meters everywhere, no empty spots, and when finally found a spot to park I got a ticket.’

Residents, too, might have cause to complain about special treatment being given to tourists. So ignoring parking violators might be off the table, but there may be some outside the box solutions to the dilemma. Perhaps city hall could issue 100 parking passes for each event or festival, which could then use them as early-bird registration incentives? Or perhaps businesses could buy festival parking passes from the city, which they would then pass to event organizers, branded with their own advertising?

Those ideas may or may not be workable, but there are solutions better than pay or be ticketed. But if tourism is going to be a main economic driver for Penticton, the city needs to ensure, as the Beach Cruise organizers suggested, visitors have a good time here and take home only positive memories.