The Garden City Refugee

Thickheaded City Staff

July 24, 2026

Loyal readers in this part of the world may recall last December, when City staff unveiled a promotion for free parking downtown. Just go to our app and enter a code, they said. If you’re having trouble, stop in and we’ll help you. Their lap dogs at the St. Catharines Downtown Association said the same thing.

Well, that went over like a ton of bricks.

Turned out that the smartphone-only parking racket that staff are hellbent on shoving down our throats wasn’t as popular as they thought it was. Nor were the bureaucrats who unilaterally decided to implement it. As I said at the time, it was the equivalent of the staff putting up a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence around the downtown, then expecting gratitude for helping us scale the fence. Many others saw it the same way. The staff was getting absolutely hammered online. Even their censors couldn’t keep up.

Surely they wouldn’t be thickheaded enough to do something like that again, I thought.

But I was wrong.

Yesterday, City staff, in conjunction with the ever-obedient SCDA, announced a new promotion for August. Two free hours of parking downtown. Instead of signing up for an account with their app, just scan a QR code provided by a merchant, they said. All that was missing was a picture of SCDA director Kat Dodge perched up on her hind legs licking the boots of the CAO. Woof! Woof!

What could be easier?

Or not.

As I said in a comment I left for the staff, they missed the boat once again. This smartphone-only parking racket is a problem entirely of their own making and they again expect credit for “helping” us make it less difficult.

Unsurprisingly, many others are in agreement. And the thin-skinned staff are once again getting fricasseed online. They remain utterly oblivious to the fact that no one wants this, no one asked for this and no one voted for this. And finally, no one voted for the bureaucrats holed up in their ivory tower imbued with the sense of entitlement to govern us by decree. At least the politicians have the courage to put their names on the ballot, something no staff member would dare do.

Sadly, however, the politicians lack the courage to provide oversight to the staff (ie. do their job), instead preferring to sit on the sidelines while the staff run the show like their own personal fiefdom.

Which virtually guarantees that the staff will keep pushing this racket again and again. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. The words of Neville Chamberlain before flying to Munich to appease Hitler. Because, unlike the case when politicians enact wildly unpopular policies, there are no consequences for the staff, who never have to face voters. They can do as they please, and if they start getting too much heat, they’ll just turn off the comments and block troublemakers like me. The tools of cowards.

Maybe if we paid them more, they’d be responsive to taxpayers. Oh right, we already do. And they still keep flipping us the bird.

But not before another round of promotion of their pride and joy. Smartphone-only parking.

Whether you want it or not is immaterial.

The mantra of modern-day public service.