Last year, parking enforcement issued approximately 572,000 tickets for pay-and-display parking offences.
This caused many residents and local businesses to raise the issue of fairness as the time on their watch may have been a few minutes different than on the parking machine.
To address this situation, Toronto City Council supported my motion to ask police to implement a protocol for a 10-minute grace period for pay-and-display parking tickets. Simply put, parking tickets shouldn’t be used as a tax grab.
The Toronto Police Services Board refused city council’s request and the matter came to the government management committee. With the assistance of city staff and a lot of technical expertise, I was able to present committee and city council with a revised parking bylaw that provides a 10-minute grace period on street pay-and-display parking.
This change ensures fairness, and it will allow officers to focus on chronic parking offenders that stay long past their welcome and park illegally on our streets every day.
It is important that you do not park illegally in a no-stopping or no-parking area at any time as this grace period only applies to legal parking in a pay-and-display spot.
If you receive a ticket that you believe should not have been issued because of the 10-minute grace period, please contact parkingdisputes@toronto.ca and include a copy of your receipt.