the richmond
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All Shook Up at Gateway Theatre, Page 9
REVIEW ESTABLISHED 1932
FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012
40 PAGES
Steveston merchants reject parking meters Field City mulls pay street parking trips, as one critic suggests going ‘back to the drawing board’ school sports in peril by Matthew Hoekstra Staff Reporter
Pay parking on the streets of Steveston Village would “absolutely kill” businesses, according to the president of the Steveston Merchants Association. “Merchants in the village have a pretty hard struggle for eight months of the year,” said Jim van der Tas. “(Pay parking is) going to put up another barrier that people have to leap through to consider using Steveston as a place to shop.” City hall is mulling the idea of charging for street parking in Steveston, following Steveston Harbour Authority’s move to add meters to federally-owned lots in the village. City council’s public works and transportation committee is expected to be the first to stickhandle the topic at its April 18 meeting. Meanwhile merchants have signed a petition against the idea, which they say would lead to a drop in business that could cause some businesses to fold. What separates Steveston from other popular destinations in the region, said van der Tas, who owns Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant, is lack of access and low density. The fishing village isn’t easily accessed by transit, he contends, nor is it home to an abundance of people to create a critical mass of customers. “You take that scenario of no density, no easy transit,
and you put pay parking in, you’re going to lose customers,” he said. On a sunny weekend in Steveston parking is difficult to find, van der Tas acknowledged, but he said that’s not unlike any other destination in Metro Vancouver, such as Granville Island or Fort Langley. For two-thirds of the year, customers can park within a block of where they want to go, he said. “You could shoot a cannon through Steveston most days and nights, specifically nights,” said van der Tas, who is urging the city to allow merchants to draft their own proposal, one that could include moving staff vehicles elsewhere. “As business owners and merchants, we’re not just saying no, we want to offer solutions.”
Majority of local teachers opt to stop volunteer work by Martin van den Hemel Staff Reporter
Pay parking ‘encourages turnover’ Talk of parking options in Steveston is almost as old as the village itself. Within the last five years, the city has held at least two rounds of open houses on the topic. Feedback from a 2006 open house found just 18 per cent of respondents supported pay parking in the village core. Last month city staff took its message to the Steveston 20/20 Group, an umbrella group of various community organizations in the area. At that meeting, staff told local community and business leaders what was driving the
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Matthew Hoekstra photo A village long known for its mostly free parking changed when the Steveston Harbour Authority started charging motorists.
concept of pay parking on streets: to increase turnover of spaces near the waterfront, reduce circling traffic and increase the use of spaces farther north. Accomplishing that could include angled parking
for Chatham and Bayview streets, with the possibility of three zones of pay parking in the village. Plans, said city spokesperson Ted Townsend, are “very preliminary.” He said staff are planning to first recommend
council approve more public consultation—including an open house this spring. Nonetheless, Townsend said the pay street parking is being considered as a way to expand parking in Steveston. See Page 5
EASTER GREETINGS
School-based field trips, sports teams and extra curricular activity are on the chopping block after Richmond teachers voted in favour of ceasing afterschool volunteer work. Hoping to send a strong message to Victoria about their displeasure at the passing of Bill 22—which legislated teachers back to work, and threatens heavy fines for those who ignore the law—Richmond Teachers’ Association president Al Klassen said local teachers felt they had no other choice but to stop doing all those extra things outside their job requirements. While the B.C. Teachers’ Federation has yet to issue an edict on what its members should do regarding sports team coaching and extra curricular activity, at least five school districts, including Richmond, went ahead and raised the issue with their membership. See Page 3
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