Article content continued

“Three hundred dollars just before Christmas? That was a real hardship for me,” said Cardinal, who contacted the Citizen with her complaint.

“(Park Safe) didn’t want to hear any excuses over the phone…. They said what I did was compared to going into a Mac’s Milk and stealing products from them. I said, ‘I am a respectable woman in my early 60s and there’s no way I wouldn’t have paid had I known that I had to pay for parking.”

Park Safe owner Marcie Tilley and her husband, Marc Proulx, don’t have much sympathy. For them, towing and ticketing is the biggest headache of the parking business.

“Our business is very simple,” Proulx said. “We park cars. We collect money. We make sure it gets to the bank. But you need to make sure that everyone follows the rules.”

Park Safe is deputized to issue City of Ottawa parking tickets on its lots, but when demand is high for parking, like on the night of the concert, tickets aren’t a good solution. For one thing, Park Safe has to split the $55 it receives for each ticket 50-50 with the city. Secondly, a non-paying car takes a spot from someone else who’s willing to pay. Cardinal and her friend were the first cars in the lot, but the place was soon full of concertgoers.

“When we went there, the other 58 people paid for their parking. They were the only two who didn’t pay for parking,” he said.

“I hate doing enforcement. It’s the worst part of our business,” Tilley said. “But we have to do it because if we don’t no one would ever pay. But it consumes a huge amount of our time. It’s the largest expense in our business.”