A potential move to have Impark take over municipal parking enforcement duties in London is raising “a bunch of red flags” for one city councillor.
City hall staff are recommending that Imperial Parking Canada Corp., also known as Impark, be awarded a three-year municipal parking enforcement contract once the current contract with Canadian Corps. Of Commissionaires Great Lakes Region expires at the end of December.
In their report, staff say the parking management giant scored highest among the four submissions it received as part of a request for proposal, or RFP, process that began in July. Impark’s contract comes at a total annual cost to the city of $1,067,778 with the option to renew for two additional periods of one year each.
The matter is set to go before members of the Community and Protective Services Committee during their meeting on Tuesday. If endorsed by committee and then council, it would be the first time in more than 30 years that the Commissionaires would have no involvement with municipal parking enforcement in London.
“(It’s) raising a bunch of red flags for me,” said Ward 2 Councillor Shawn Lewis during an interview with 980 CFPL’s Mike Stubbs on Monday.
“Frankly, (it’s raising) a bunch of red flags for folks in the community who have actually dealt with Impark before and are absolutely not impressed with the customer service, which seems to run contrary to what’s in the staff report to us,” he continued.
“I’m quite concerned that we’re looking at a situation where we’re going with the lowest bid rather than potentially the bid that’s going to give us the best service for Londoners.”
980 CFPL has reached out to Impark for comment.
The Commissionaires’ most recent agreement with the city, a five-year single-source contract awarded in 2015, came at a cost of between $900,000 and $1.13 million per year, and was awarded on the rationale that the Commissionaires were the only ones who bid on tenders for the parking enforcement contract in 2005 and 2010, according to a staff report at the time.
City staff also advised in 2015 that future contracts would be recommended following an RFP process, according to the report going before councillors this week. Such a process began this past July.
The report says four bids were received for the contract which were evaluated based on technical criteria outlined in the RFP document, as well as their cost. In the end, staff say Impark demonstrated the ability to fully meet the city’s requirements, scoring “very well in both the technical and price evaluation stages.”
City staff note in their recommendation that Impark has a “proven track record” in the parking industry with “over 100 municipal and institutional contracts” in North America, including in London where it manages a number of parking lots.
They add Impark is “able to provide the most number of staff, while remaining within the total annual operating budget as set out in the Multi-Year-Budget.”
Lewis says he’s concerned what that means for the workers themselves.
“When I see a bid of a million dollars and a reference in here that they’ll provide the most staff for that money, to me that says we’re actually going to have lower paying jobs and we’re going to give away some good jobs that have a social benefit to us to contract this out,” Lewis argues.
The mandate of the Commissionaires, a self-funded, not-for-profit security firm, is to provide meaningful work to ex-military personnel, the organization says. It’s Canada’s largest private sector employer of veterans.
That fact, Lewis says, is something he’s cognizant of when it comes to the parking enforcement contract.
“I think that really is an important piece of how we’re evaluating is what we’re getting back beyond the dollars and cents,” he said.
According to a city report, London first awarded a contract to the Commissionaires for parking matters in 1988, with enforcement limited to shopping malls, residential complexes, fire routes, and accessible zones.
In the subsequent decades, that scope has expanded to include things like accessible parking violations, municipal parking lots, parking metres, and more.
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