9th Annual Afro Festival

It started out as a dull, cloudy, rainy day with participants crowded under the shelter and tents at Waterloo Park. The joyous singing, dancing, drumming and the many friendly smiles at the 9th Annual Afro Festival seemed to part the clouds and brought out the warm sunshine.

After bringing greetings from the city of Waterloo, I spoke about my visit to Lesotho and South Africa. In August 2009, I used my vacation time to travel to Africa where I worked as a volunteer in an AIDS clinic, was a guest speaker at a conference against the social stigma surrounding AIDS and also visited the workshop where they make the bracelets that are sold as part of the Bracelet of Hope (http://www.braceletofhope.ca) fund-raising campaign. It was a life-changing experience that still reminds me every day of the endless blessings that we enjoy as citizens of Waterloo.

Many thanks to the African Women's Alliance (http://www.afrowomen.org/) for organizing a wonderful festival for the whole community. The entertainment, games, food and information displays, but most of all the people involved, were as welcoming and friendly as the sunshine.

Parking in Waterloo

There are always many questions and concerns raised about the City of Waterloo parking by-laws and the reason for specific time and zone restrictions. Parking is a complex issue and there is not one easy answer and one easy solution.

The city's overnight and three hour restrictions have been put in place for a number of reasons including road maintenance, road safety, municipal liability, crime prevention and nuisance control.

These reasons cover many issues but the underlying concern is making sure the roads are safe,available for maintenance issues when needed and takes into consideration that roadways were never considered or designed as a long term parking solution. Waterloo has gone beyond most municipalities and offers an online and telephone exemption system consisting of 18 exemptions per residence each year. This system is designed to allow for those instances when extended short term parking is required while at the same time attempting to maintain the community standard that exists in Waterloo with respect to parking.

To this point Council has passed the UpTown Waterloo Parking Strategy, in hopes of dealing with issues that have arisen in the UpTown area. City staff are also working on a city wide pay and display strategy to present to Council sometime in 2011. It is not anticipated at this time that on street parking in residential zones will change in the near future. We must also consider that even if the current restrictions were to be modified, there would still likely be a combination of restriction, prohibition and paid parking woven into any new system. Also, any new system would have to consider safety as it relates to road widths, community standards as it relates to the wishes of each area, and ongoing maintenance.

I hope this information helps to clarify some of your questions and puts some reasoning behind the parking by-laws the city currently has in place.