To bring everyone up to date, I've had no luck working internally to stop staff bringing forward charging. The City Manager's office is busy with the budget and not interest in this issue. City Transportation and Toronto Parking Authority staff have taken the position that despite Council's actions to remove the direction to stop the motorcycle parking fee exemption when pay-by-plate is implemented, in response to our lobbying back in 2013, the final recommendation as approved is silent on charging. They therefore say that staff are not prohibited from bringing back a recommendation to charge in the future.
The Mayor's office supports staff’s position, and when I asked John Tory about this at the Scarborough Town Hall meeting on January 20[SUP]th[/SUP], he publicly stated that he supports charging at a proportional rate. The Mayor's office staff person I spoke with was concerned about the lack of notice and consultation, but trusts that staff will do this prior to bringing a report back. Given past history, I suspect that is highly unlikely. The end result is that a report will come to Public Works and Infrastructure Committee sometime this year, and it will appear on the agenda 5 days prior to the meeting. Since that meeting is the only opportunity for public deputations, we will need to be ready. I will monitor the agendas and let everyone know when it happens.
I have met with the Motorcycle & Moped Industry Council (MMIC) and the Motorcyclists Confederation of Canada (MCC), and we agreed to work together to coordinate a strategy to fight this when it comes forward. The first step will be an open meeting to be held at the Toronto Motorcycle show on Saturday February 21[SUP]st[/SUP]. Details still need to be coordinated, but I’ll get the info out as soon as it’s ready.
Given that we are now need to plan our response in advance of a meeting with an unknown date, we decided to set up a separate thread specifically to be used as an organizing tool. This thread will be made sticky as well. Here is the link:
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...nse-Coordination-Thread&p=2266929#post2266929
We can still post general info and thoughts on this original thread, but the new thread should be the focus of our organized response, coordinating meetings, events, deputations, that kind of thing.