Despite initial confusion that left Scarborough residents scratching their heads, a new City of Toronto harmonized zoning bylaw will not affect the 61 per cent of Scarborough homeowners.
Local drivers should have nothing to worry about, said Bill Blakes, manager of the Scarborough district for the municipal licensing and standards division for the City of Toronto.
“If Scarborough residents were parking legally with the old bylaw, and they keep in compliance then there’s a chance it might not affect them at all,” Blakes said.
Before this bylaw came into effect on Oct. 1, a residential home with a two-car garage was allowed to park cars on the driveway as well as the garage.
The new bylaw will restrict a new residential home with a two-car garage to limit parking in front of the garage with a depth of seven meters. The bylaw aims to limit parked cars along the entire driveway.
The new bylaw will apply only to private properties and newly built residential dwellings.
There isn’t much opposition to this new bylaw, but it has stirred up some conflict, said Fawzi Bidawi, Scarborough resident and past Ward 37 councillor candidate.
“Perhaps it was not properly implemented, but I think the real issue here for many homeowners is that the government is telling them how many vehicles they can have,” Bidawi said. “When you start telling people how many cars they can have on their property, that’s when their mobility seems to be challenged.”
Bidawi said the bylaw will help to preserve the city’s aesthetics, and that we owe it to each neighbour to protect the environment and our irrigation systems. He added he hopes it will avoid trends where cars are literally everywhere parked on top of each other.
If residents abide by the bylaw, then they will not heavily enforce the new zoning bylaw, Blakes said.
But complaints of inappropriate driveway parking or lawn parking will be taken, and offenders could receive fines up to $5,000.