Previous Issues
The cost of parking
?The decision of Markham-Stouffville Hospital to charge for parking at Uxbridge’s Cottage Hospital beginning in a couple of weeks (see our story on page 14), is a curious one indeed. According to Mayor Bob Shepherd, one of two Uxbridge reps on the MSH Board (our former - and perhaps future - mayor Gerri-Lynn O’Connor being the other), the decision never came to the Board, it was purely administrative.
This is strange, because asking people to pay for something for which they’ve never paid before is a very political move, one which bureaucrats are rarely eager to make without at least the rubber stamp of their political masters. When you add to this the fact that the parking lot at the hospital will become the one and only place in the entire township where you have to part with your hard-earned money just to stash your vehicle, you have to wonder whether the decision-makers at MSH really thought this through.
But apart from whether he had a hand in the decision, does the mayor agree with it?
He’s ambivalent.
“I’m not really sure there’s much point to charging at the hospital, I don’t think it will make much difference,” he says, “but we can’t get away from charging for parking forever, we have to eventually pay the price for driving our cars. I think we’ll eventually have meters downtown, in fact I’d like to see a parking garage there someday, and users will certainly have to pay for that.”
The mayor’s probably right about downtown parking, although if he faced a storm of protest from downtown merchants about the angle of parking, the cost of parking (there’ll never be meters at WalMart or Canadian Tire) will raise another tempest for sure. But we have to disagree about parking at the hospital. We think it will make a decided difference to the bottom line in the hospital budget, but in totally the opposite direction to that which the decision-makers had in mind.
Do the folks at MSH not think our community is contributing enough already to the operations at the Cottage Hospital? Did they talk to their own people with the Foundation or Auxiliary? Uxbridgers love their hospital; it is their favourite charity by far. Over its five decades, the people of this township have taken millions of dollars out of their own pockets to keep the hospital well-eqipped and well-staffed. It seems like every other week, some organization, be it a service club or a sports team or a theatre group, is holding some sort of fundraiser for the hospital.
We would not blame Uxbridgers at all if they took this move as a petty slap in the face. Obviously we can handle the six bucks a day, that’s not the issue. The issue is that someone who is constantly being asked to shell out small amounts is going to think twice when it comes to the big amounts at the next Foundation fundraiser.
The least they could have done is ask us, conduct a survey, see how we felt about paying for parking. The reason they didn’t, no doubt, is that they knew what the answer would be. Oh, for the days when the people who made the important decisions about our hospital actually worked here.
