The town is raising fees on the paid boat trailer parking lot at 6901 Main St. to keep up with administrative costs.                   Image: Google Maps

Dale Boyd

Times-Chronicle

The Town of Osoyoos is raising boat trailer parking fees on the paid lot at 6901 Main St. to keep up with administrative costs and keep the lot open until Oct. 15.

The off-street parking bylaw was updated at the July 6 regular meeting of town council to include an increase in fees in the coming years and change the hours at the lot to reflect the current hours of 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The lot brings in roughly $25,000 a year in revenue, according to a town staff report.

A staff report to council stated a considerable amount of staff time is spent on the enforcement and administration of tickets at the boat trailer parking lot and staff suggested an increase to the rates charged effective May 2021.

In 2019, bylaw enforcement officers wrote 130 tickets related to the lot. Twenty-four tickets were sent to collections, 76 were paid, and the rest were dismissed due to a wide range of issues. The current daily rate is $5, the weekly rate is $30, and monthly rate is $150 and the rates haven’t been increased since 2018.

The daily parking rate will rise to $7.50 in May 2021 up to $10 by May 2023. The weekly rate will increase to $45 by May 2021, and to $60 by May 2023, and the monthly parking rate is set to increase to $190 in May 2021, and increase to $250 by May 2023.

The purpose of the lot is mainly for visitors to have a secure place to store their trailer, said Town of Osoyoos CAO Allan Chabot, and raising the rates also ensures the town is not competing with local storage companies.

“The idea is not to be a long-term storage facility, so I think it would be very rare we’d see someone paying a monthly rate. There would be cheaper opportunities in the community, alternatives to that, like some of the storage facilities out on the highway, and the idea is not to take their business either,” Chabot said.

The revision to the off-street parking bylaw extends the operating season of the lot to Oct. 15 to include the Thanksgiving long weekend and staff will monitor lot use to see if the seasons should be extended.

“I’ve never heard anybody ever say anything negative about it,” Coun. CJ Rhodes said. “The perception is the prices are doubling, but even at that I still think it’s a pretty fair price and the convenience of having that, it’s just the best thing we could have.

Rhodes added the off-street parking bylaw eliminating boat trailer parking on town streets freed up almost 22 kilometres of parking space.

“So it’s a huge benefit,” Rhodes said.