Charlottetown Council Hates Business

We moved our business about a year ago because we came to the conclusion that the City of Charlottetown hates having businesses downtown. How did I stumble across this,------ simple we got three parking tickets in one day.

Why did we get those tickets you ask-------simple, there is no frigging place to park downtown.

How did I reach this conclusion about the hate -----simple, City council runs the place and if they won't let you park without some bastard in a flourescent yellow vest coming along and screwing up your day, thats if you are unfortunate enough to actually find a spot to facilitate being held for ransom. I was talking with a mild mannered businessman on the street as I was doing my daily sneak into the Post office with feeding a metre and he actually started to stutter as he was telling me about his take on the parking he was so pissed off.

His office is on the lower half of Queen street where council felt it would be quaint to recreate Charlottetown of the 1800's. Great idea if we go back to horses but the recreation is going to require reducing available parking spaces by 27 in a block around his office. the poor bugger is dying now because nobody can find him now without leaving their car at the mall and taking a cab.

And what really pisses everyone off is that in order to do something about the situation they made it worse. New Federal building coming coming downtown and with it comes hundreds of people. Guess what, City council decides they will not require the Feds to follow the Cities Bylaws and supply parking for their employees in a garage on their building site. So they give them a permit with no provision for parking. Its already impossible to find a spot, I can just imagine it in a years time. So what the hell can you do about it, the only answer is start running the town in shifts. We already have some time slots camped on. The drink till you're blind set has Friday and Staurday night reserved and the Federal people invented something called flex hours to make sure their people grab every fuckin parking spot downtown while the rest of us are waiting for a civilized hour to start our days. The feds let their people work a 7 and one half hour day and start any time they want. And the biggest want is to get a parking spot, so they all come into work a 7am and leave at 3pm. Incidentally we really get our monies worth on this one because they get to put an hour and a half of drinking coffee in without anyone disturbing them.

The problem for the business set is that there is no point in bringing in staff at 7 to fight for parking turf because there is no one around to buy anything until about 9:30. But I don't care anymore I'm out on Walker Drive, lots of parking, no metres.