Today, we delve into a bitter dispute in Stoney Creek and Waterdown, Ontario, where business owners say parking meters are killing their businesses. And we talk to an official in East Sussex, England, where the war on parking meters has reached epic heights.

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Today's guest host was Mike Finnerty.

Part One of The Current

Satire

It's Friday July 1st.

As William and Kate join the nation for Canada Day, a new poll finds that over half of young Canadians are indifferent towards
the royals.

That certainly explains the thousands who have gathered to shrug.

The is the Current.

Parking Meters - Judi Partridge

It has been exactly a year since parking meters arrived in Waterdown and Stoney Creek -- both communities which are now part of the amalgamated city of Hamilton in southwestern Ontario. And the controversy that came with the meters isn't going away. Parking meters have been routinely vandalized and broken, city council is still divided on the issue and business-owners are furious. We heard from Derek Thornborrow, an optometrist at Waterdown Optometry.

Judi Partridge has been fighting against those parking meters ever since the idea was first raised two years ago. She is a Hamilton city councilor from Ward 15 for Flamborough which includes Waterdown. That's where we've reached her.

Parking Meters - Bob Bratina

Bob Bratina is the Mayor of Hamilton. He wasn't in office when the parking meters came in, but he has nonetheless been saddled with trying to decide what to do next. He was in Hamilton.

Parking Meters - Roger Williams

The war against parking meters has reached ominous heights in the town of Lewes in East Sussex, England. Roger Williams is the head of Transport Operations for the East Sussex County Council.

Parking Meter Trivia

The first parking meter in the world was set up on July 16th, 1935 in downtown Oklahoma City.

The first parking ticket was issued in Oklahoma City a month later when Reverend C H North stiffed the new fangled meter a nickel while he went into a grocery store. The ticket was dismissed.

Ironically, nickel-rich Sudbury Ontario was the first Canadian city to install parking meters. That was in 1940.

And Edmonton got its first parking meters in 1948. A few days later Edmonton became the first Canadian city to report the theft of a parking meter.

Related Links:

• Sussex parking meter vandals branded "terrorists" by Ben Parsons - The Argus
• Flamborough News Vandals target Main Street parking meters - again
  By Dianne Cornish - Flamborough Review
• Parking still a touchy subject By Emma Reilly - Hamilton Spectator

  
  

Other segment from today's show:

• Urban by Nature