CUPE hoping city will bring parking enforcement back in-house

A local union is looking to return the responsibility of parking enforcement to the City of Windsor.

At council Monday night, the president of CUPE Local 543 made a presentation explaining why parking enforcement should be "insourced" once again.

"Hopefully, we can get our foot in the door and be successful at this and maybe change the dialogue at the table from no to yes, because we have had a lot of years of no," said Jason Parent,president of CUPE Local 543.

Council deferred the decision until the next meeting which falls after the elections. Even though a new council will have been selected, they will not be sworn in so the decision will fall on the current council's lap.

"Council maintains that they still want the outsourcing but if there are ways of improving the services through some of the measures the union president brought to the table, they are wanting to consider it," said Onorio Colucci, the city's CAO.

In 2010, council made a decision to outsource the parking enforcement jobs to the local division of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, which bills itself as the only national not-for-profitsecurity organization.

Parent said there are benefits for the city to bring the service back in-house. He believes a switch could help with crime downtown because there is "an extra set of eyes" and an "extra uniform that is walking around."

"We don't see a lot of high visibility of parking enforcement being around It gives that little bit of safety from the core that I think a lot of people feel is missing from the city right now," Parent said.

The agreement with the Commissionaires is set to expire at the end of December. The 2018 budget for parking enforcement services is $657,850.

"If we can get the dialogue going and if this is in the right direction, if it's not this year, maybe it's next year maybe with a new council," said Parent.