05 Mar Halifax’s parking czar relents—for now

Halifax’s unaccountable parking czar Ken Reashor used his arbitrary powers yesterday to end the Halifax peninsula parking ban 26 days earlier than expected.

The ban held sway for 84 days, from December 14 through March 4. I can’t find actual snowfall data for that period, but the table below (sources here and here) shows average snow conditions in Halifax (the only data available to officials when they impose the ban).

So in an average year, the 84-days period from December 14 through March 4 would include about 16 days with snowfall and about 68 without.

Why not target the 16 days when a ban is actually needed, with towing blitzes and much stiffer fines? Why not focus on the miscreants who actually interfere with snow removal and stop inconveniencing responsible car owners for an entire winter? It’s not as though Halifax sends trucks around on non-snowy nights to push snow back to the curb.

Ah but it’s so much more convenient for snow-removal bureaucrats to kick everyone off the streets all the time. Much more lucrative, too. Czar Reashor’s raiders issued 7,637 tickets during the ban, for a windfall revenue of $381.850, 81 percent of which presumably came on nights when no snow fell.

Czar Reashor is unaccountable in that city council can neither fire him nor tell him how to do his job. Only provincial transportation minister Bill Estabrooks can do that. Estabrooks, who represents a part of HRM where the ban is not imposed, bobs and weaves on the topic, insisting he needs direction from HRM Council and a change in legislation before protecting citizens from over-reaching bureaucrats. He’d sing a different tune if they ticketed in Timberlea.

Non-peninsular HRM councillors, who get the windfall revenue but not the aggravation, smugly stall for time. Two weeks ago, they rejected downtown councillor Dawn Marie Sloane’s  proposal that council write Estabrooks asking him to ease up on the ban. Outlying councillors insisted a committee first study the issue—and report back once the 2011 ban is moot.

In the Great Scheme, this is a small issue. But it is emblematic of the arrogance that overtakes people with power: the comfortable notion that citizens must serve the convenience of officials, not the other way round.