Update on Constance Bay Parking Management

In the four years that I have had the honour to represent West Carleton-March as your Councillor, I have worked with residents on many longstanding and complex issues. One of those has been parking management in Constance Bay during the busy summer months.

After hearing from residents, holding a Constance Bay Town Hall meeting, and conducting a community survey, we have now reached a decision.

The survey closed on June 28th, and we received over 350 responses. We have reviewed the survey, and the results are as follows:

• 70.45% of respondents voted to keep the current system in place and not introduce a permit system

• Another 18.18% voted to change all existing regulations and implement a permit system

• 11% voted to keep the current regulations that are in place in some locations of Constance Bay (like the No Parking sign across from 375 Bayview Drive), while also introducing a permit system for the remainder of roads.

  
  

These numbers are very clear, and as a result, I will not be supporting a guest parking permit system for Constance Bay at this time.

As promised, I will continue to work directly with residents and staff in Traffic Services to look at potential solutions.

I would like to thank everybody who took the time to complete the survey and provide feedback. While the survey results are clear, the comments residents shared also provided valuable direction for where we go from here.

For those who are interested in how we arrived at this decision and would like more information on the process, the background is outlined below.

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Background

The constant stream of visitors to Constance Bay in the summer months and the concurrent issues of dangerous driving, improper parking, and disrespectful behaviour, have created a situation that required a conversation with residents about what they would like to see put in place.

One of the most consistent complaints I heard was about parking along Bayview and side streets off Bayview and the issues it causes on nice summer days when many come from outside our community to enjoy the beauty Constance Bay offers. These are all public roads, so our ability to determine who uses them is limited. Creating a system that did not allow people into the village was never going to be an option, nor would that ever be something I would support.

With that in mind, we initially thought it might be appropriate to limit how long non-residents would be able to park within the village. The goal was to make non-resident long-term parking for use of water access more time restrained. This might also reduce the types of issues our office regularly hears about while helping ensure that water access points and other amenities remain available for residents and their guests.

Currently, much of Constance Bay is covered by the standard, unsigned parking regulations for the City of Ottawa. These include things like a three-hour parking limit on weekdays between 7 AM and 7 PM, and a six-hour limit on Saturdays and holidays. Our office, and Traffic Services, wanted to present an option that we felt would best reflect the reality of the situation and while not completely prohibiting non-resident parking, would limit it.

During the town hall meeting I held in Constance Bay in May of 2025, we acknowledged that this system would have unintended consequences for residents. They, too, would be subject to the parking regulations and only their guests would manage short-term exemptions with parking passes. While this was not ideal, there were no options available that did not have similar unintended consequences.

I was uncomfortable supporting these sorts of regulations without hearing what people thought of them.

So, we created a survey with two similar options and an option to keep things as they are in an attempt to find consensus amongst residents. Had we put out a survey with twenty options, it would’ve been impossible to get the kind of consensus required to implement such a change, so we decided to keep the options limited to ensure we could understand if this particular option was attractive to people. We also offered a "more comments" section which will help better arm us with information about what residents really want.

To accomplish this, we began a mailing campaign that used the city's distribution system to send out our survey information to 911 residences in hopes that we would receive a large number of responses. We posted statements online on May 30th with a link and on my social media accounts to try to reach as many people as possible. Unfortunately, there were some issues with Canada Post delivery that has left some residents unaware of the survey.

I need to thank certain residents for sharing the information with their neighbours who did not receive a mailout. We are not certain the reason for some people being missed. In some cases, the returned letters were returned because there was a residence, but no mailbox. In other cases, it seems that some homes were simply missed. We have been compiling the issues and will be sharing those with the distribution group to make sure that we address the errors in our distribution for city communications moving forward.

On top of the responses for the survey, our "more comments" section told us a lot about how residents wanted this dealt with. Many of these were similar, but we received some fifty different ideas about what should be done to deal with the issues that many have highlighted. Many of these were out of the scope of the survey but will be important information moving forward as we try to come up with solutions together.

What we heard from residents was:

• More bylaw enforcement is required, regardless of if we change the parking regulations or not,

• Explore the possibility for the city to purchase property for public parking lots,

• Support for the permit system, but concern that 1-hour is too short a period, parking should be allowed for longer,

• Paid parking for visitors only, and

• Limit this to the problem areas.

While there are limitations to accomplishing these suggestions, including how Bylaw Services prioritizes enforcement requests (which is outside the role of our office), and the difficulty introduced by having several different parking regulations in a small area, we are happy to continue this conversation with Constance Bay residents to try to come to a solution that works for the majority of residents.

Thank you again to everyone who took the time to participate. Your feedback has helped shape this decision and will continue to inform future discussions.

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If you have comments or questions, please contact my office at Clarke.Kelly@Ottawa.ca or call 613-580-2475.