When Carly Hawke pulled up and parked in the tiny street next to the Jack Purcell dog park, she did not expect to get a parking ticket.

It was already dark outside on a Monday night. No way a bylaw officer will be doing his run now.

Mere minutes after she let her dog out of the car to run in the busy playground, a city vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street and an officer came out. He worked his way down the 22 parking spots lined up against the park, checking every dashboard on the way for a permit to park on city property.

When he got to Hawke’s car, he called out to the dog owners, trying to find the culprit. Hawke came out and explained the situation.

She was lucky that night, but many residents of the busy Centretown neighbourhood aren’t.

The parking spots near the Jack Purcell Park have raked in over $162,000 in fines and fees since 2010 according to an analysis of city parking data. Over 2,000 tickets have been issued for parking on city property at the address associated to those spots, 320 Jack Purcell Lane.

A quarter of all tickets issued for this violation is given out on the 100-metre long lane.

Drivers have to frequent the Jack Purcell Community Centre to obtain a permit to park on those spots. They must display the written approval on their dashboard or they will receive a ticket, according to section 113D (3) of the Ottawa Traffic Parking bylaw.

“We absolutely need those spots for our clients,” said Cody, who works at the community centre and declined to give his full name.

“Half of our clients are disabled,” he said. “We doubled our programs recently so attendance is way up.”

Cody estimates a few hundred people come through the doors of the community centre every day.

“Not only people from the neighbourhood,” he said. “We got people coming in from Orléans, Vanier, who need a spot to park their cars.”

Jack Purcell Lane lies parallel to the busy Elgin street artery, where many restaurants and pubs liven up Ottawa’s nightlife. Many patrons turn onto the short street looking for a free parking spot.

Another staff member at the community centre says she sees bylaw officers roll down the Jack Purcell Lane five to six times a day, and they almost always give out tickets.

The parking spots did not always have the money-making reputation they have now. In 2011, the city only issued two tickets. That number skyrocketed to 1,139 tickets two years later.

The City of Ottawa evoked multiple possible factors for the sudden increase in parking tickets, including weather, but denies those spots are being targeted.

“Historic weather data, for instance, indicates that 2013 saw particularly heavy snowfall in Ottawa,” wrote Scott Campbell, acting chief of By-law and Regulatory Services, in an email. “There has been no focused parking enforcement effort at this location.”

Bylaw officers get assigned a beat, or neighbourhood, and rotate every few months with another officer. The officer who almost fined Hawke had just got assigned to a new beat on the day of the incident.
He says officers are encouraged to seek out the violators before actually handing out the tickets.

Hawke, on her part, is thankful for the officers’ mercy, but thinks the signs posted in front of each parking spot ought to be clearer.

“I think we should be allowed to be parked there. I mean, [the community centre] has the same name as the park. It’s a bit confusing,” she said.