Salt Spring Islanders have a storied tradition of rolling up our collective sleeves to tackle problems left too long unsolved.
Increasingly, as we’ve seen with the proliferation of employer-operated housing, those ad hoc solutions are created now by businesses. To solve parking scarcity during the high demand Saturday Market period, a new lot on Ganges Hill has been launched with a novel approach: framing a partnership between island businesses and local nonprofits, with support from the Chamber of Commerce. And always eager for fundraising opportunities, we have little doubt the response to a call for groups willing to staff the lot in exchange for half the $10-per-car fee was robust. Back-of-the-napkin math would easily put the take in the high hundreds, which is not bad for a day’s volunteering.
At the May 16 Saturday Market, early reviews were good. Holding some cars up the hill thinned out Ganges traffic noticeably, if not transformatively.
That the new lot on Fulford-Ganges Road might also relieve parking pressure at Country Grocer/Ganges Village Marketplace was not lost upon islanders, who tend to hold forth on summer traffic at both places with a Yogi Berra level of zen: “no one shops on weekends, it’s too crowded.” The beauty of the “market parking” sign was that it could be read to cover either, and property owner Leigh Large himself was spotted driving at least the inaugural shuttle run down the hill in the placarded six-seater golf cart.
The abrupt long-weekend launch of the lot left no time to investigate, but while it seems unlikely the property is zoned to permit off-site parking, it seems even less likely our Local Trust Committee — at least those members who still show up to the meetings — would enforce against a collaboration featuring struggling charities and Salt Spring’s largest private employer.
Our trustees have spoken as a single voice — lately, almost literally — in refusing to let perfect be the enemy of good. And we’ve certainly chided them before for selectively enforcing their own bylaws, rather than tackling the substantive work addressing the land use authority’s role in whatever problem needs fixing.
But however one feels about shortcuts, by definition they get somewhere faster. We hope both our vendors and island nonprofits absolutely rake in the cash this summer.