By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Free parking will return to downtown Cobourg – temporarily – due to equipment that the town will not be receiving after all.
That equipment would have been a batch of new pay-and-display parking-slip dispensers to serve the newly configured waterfront parking areas announced last week.
Director of Public Works Laurie Wills said they got the news less than a week prior to the council meeting Monday night.
“We put our heads together to come up with an interim solution we think is a pretty good one, considering the circumstances we are in,” she said.
In order to implement the paid waterfront-area parking that was contemplated in the new policy rolled out last week, the existing six pay-and-display parking-slip dispensers will be taken out of the downtown and moved to strategic waterfront locations.
“So there will be nothing on King Street,” Wills said.
“We are proposing a three-hour limit for the downtown that would be free. Essentially, King Street will be free parking, three-hour limit, until we receive the new pay-and-display machines. This fall, we hope.”
Wills’s report noted that the new machines – which were the ones meant to be installed in the waterfront area – were ordered Feb. 25 from JJ MacKay Canada Limited. Delivery was estimated to take six to eight weeks.
The new delivery date is not carved in stone either, with no guarantee of delivery before August.
The free-parking season downtown will run from May 20 to Oct. 10, and the town’s parking bylaw has been revised to accommodate new developments.
The new machines will be installed downtown to replace the old ones over the winter, according to plan.
The removal of the pay-and-display machines was set to begin Tuesday in order that they can be in place by the time of the May holiday weekend.
These new machines inspired admiring comments from council. Mayor John Henderson said the company is well respected, rolling out its machines on the national and international stage.
