Thursday, May 2, 2024

How do you lose money with pay parking ?

https://www.westerlynews.ca/news/tofino-loses-money-on-downtown-pay-parking-after-staff-error-underestimates-costs-7352823 

  WTF ?? 

20 comments:

Ralph Tieleman said...

I predict that all of those involved will get a raise and obviously they need assistants. Jobs for life at DOT !

Anonymous said...

Glad to know our water system has great managers.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it is time for the district to let some individuals go and then hire competent people. To their jobs. Isn’t this a repeat performance on showing ncompetency for some of them? Oh now wait, the water meter reading fiasco of the resorts comes to mind. I guess they must be learning on the job as we gave away about a million dollars by misreading the water meters. This mistake is less money. Bravo! Let’s keep improving. Perhaps by 2050 the errors should be reduced to zero.

Anonymous said...

Some staff are doing fine work . Look how fast that subdivision across from the daycare got approved !

Anonymous said...

Even if the road closures had not happened Dot would have netted $40,000 from downtown parking. Did I get that right. Would that have been worth it. Maybe a more fundamental review is warranted. Beach Parking churning out a good profit for the taxpayers. But downtown??? I doubt staff has included all the hours upon hours of staff time gone into the project. All the back and forth with the previous years indecision, second guessing and changing coarse in etc. What do those hours total in costs.


And where is the CAO in all this....insulated by six layers of bureaucracy.

Anonymous said...

To state the obvious, the beach is not downtown. People go there for very different reasons. You don't go to the beach and then have a load of groceries to get home. If the highway road closures and the sewer and road work have been rough on the pay parking budget, can you imagine how rough it is for all of the downtown locally owned and operated businesses??? And now how the pay parking is affecting them? Didn't hear staff mention that. Right, that would require thinking past the desk and on the ground to how people in the community actual live.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about the District mismanaging anything....Just hire a few more newbies, fresh out of daycare, to trade emails and phone messages for a few weeks and draught a report.

Titled "The impact of "Progressive Managment" on the Tax Payers of Tofino". There fixed it.

You pay more............

Ralph Tieleman said...

Let’s reduce the number of beach parking spots by putting in planters, benches and traffic calming devices. If done like downtown , we could lose money on beach parking as well .

Anonymous said...

Ralph they already accomplished that by the stupid design and location of the new Cox Bay facilities. Who decided that? terrible design and location. Inch by inch they are destroying everything that made this place great. Time for an uprising.

Anonymous said...

Tofino staff are starting to sound like an Abbott and Costello comedy routine(Who is on first)

Anonymous said...

It’s not a leak

Anonymous said...

We pay staff to think
We have a mayor and council hired to think.
Why are there people running Tofino who can’t do basic math. Those responsible have just given the Mayor and council grounds to dismiss them. Heads should roll. Hopefully this causes some cleansing at the district offices. It is long overdue.
Why should we have all the business destroying beautification schemes removing parking and pay parking plans that could not ever make real money all at the expense of the livability of the community?

Anonymous said...

lol to 3:35 good one!

Turns out if the masses scream about over tourism we get endless decisions that end up "curbing" development or any support for local business community (you know the payroll PAYERS)

Do I care they lost money? Yes. Do I care more that they sold parking spaces while darn near 50% of the downtown streets were carved up and never repaved - yes that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Do I care they can't do math? YES that's terrifying what are you paying your consultants for my goodness.

What I care more about though is that just as predicted the only winner is Robbins Parking. If there was any reasonable skill they would manage their own program and keep the 5.5% commission. Visitors pay a fortune to travel here, why are we penalizing them more to generate half a mill in revenue for a parking company??? Business owners stretch themselves to make through every winter or highway closer or mayor with a god complex. When will the DoT take care of them?

If the masses really want to diversify away from
Tourism don't you think you should do that BEFORE we slowly bleed the main engine of our economy dry?? no one wants to come here anymore because they get guaged at every turn.

what's another good industry we can depend on? I forget did we try resource extraction already.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't a leak.... the "geology" of that part of town must have changed

Anonymous said...

Council can't even run a parking lot.....millions of tourists and one parking service but can't turn a profit....We are surely.. done. Enter your own expletive.

Anonymous said...


What's remarkable.
It took the local newspaper 5 months to figure out what happend at the Dec.5th 2023 council meeting.

Anonymous said...

There's no point trying to figure out how to improve upon the tourist industry if the district of Tofino is intent upon making it a crummy experience… Besides losing money at it from the taxpayers point of view.
There seems to be a sweeping trend in government these days to use fuzzy thinking about economic issues.. then claiming that's what the experts told you (either paid consultants or paid employees or both). Is anybody on council running a successful business? I mean besides getting paid by the taxpayer to pretend they are.

It's the same logic in operation concerning our water situation fast coming into view. Rather than declare a moratorium temporarily on development and enacting more stringent water restrictions.... Counsel seems to be supporting more development willy-nilly and moving forward with water recommendations. We'll see what happens on May 9 at the water meeting when I do hope the issue of the plastic pipe under the water breaking three times last summer is brought into focus and what it means..

Anonymous said...

Can’t read a water meter. Can't read a parking meter. What can they do ? Raise taxes !

Anonymous said...

Math .....no forget math....too high brow... Simple Arithmetic, Adding and Subtracting, must be, is obviously, Racist, Sexist, Everything Phobic and must be struck from the education system.

Oh you say... that is already in effect.

Well Dot should be paying "Reparations" to the people of Tofino for destroying our culture.

Anonymous said...

Giving away lots of money and actually losing around $30,000, while making the tourists visitors angry, has got to make tourism Tofino and the Chamber of Commerce really happy… Besides us taxpayers that pay people to do this. What's the point of spending RMI money to promote tourism, then spending taxpayer money to discourage it - if you look at it realistically. Yes, who's on first?