(translated document)

Request presented at Borough Ville-Marie
onTuesday October 2nd, 2007

Madam, Gentlemen,

I really appreciate the idea of transforming the old mechanical parking meter into a piggy bank to help the homeless and I do contribute when passing by one of them.

I enjoy so much that idea that I was wondering if it could be applied to another cause. As you know, since three of you came to the Opening of our park on September 20, we now have a beautiful dog park in Old Montréal.

I take this opportunity to thank the people of Borough Ville-Marie for having responded positively to the dog park project that our dog owners association, the Canine Club Vieux-Montréal, presented to you last year. However, even if the City granted us most of our requests, our association is a non-profit organization legally registered and as such we still need some money to pay for our basic needs and also bring some improvement to our park.

As you are aware of, call for funds is never an easy task, specially for non-profit organizations. That is why I came to think that a parco-don installed at our dog park entrance could incite visitors who come to enjoy the park to make a donation and in doing so contribute to the maintenance of the park and help our dog owners association.

We would keep the name “Parco-Don” but instead of “L’Itinéraire” as they call it for the homeless, we would put our name, Canine Club Vieux-Montréal, and would add a more appropriate message relating to our club. We would paint the parking meter in yellow and add our logo.

Of course we know that parking meters are managed by Stationnement Montréal and that we cannot ask them to take care of a parking meter isolated from the rest of the meters. That’s why I suggest that you provided us with a parking meter with two cassettes instead of ony one, allowing us to take out one cassette and replace it with the other, which we would bring to Stationnement Montréal to have them open it for us and give us the amount it contains.

While preparing our project of a dog park, we’ve visited other dog parks in order to get some ideas and learn from the experience of others. We have met many dedicated people who invest a lot of energy and even their own money into their dog park since, as I said before, calls for funds are not easy.  If there would have been a paro-don to those dog parks we’ve visited and enjoyed with our dog, we would have certainly contributed. This is a way to recognize the efforts of the people who take care of it and to say thank you. In Old Montréal, we’ll certainly have occasional visitors, tourists, who would be more than happy to leave us some change as a sign of appreciation.

There are many old mechanical parking meters which are not in use anymore. The idea that we could recuperate them and use them to help the non-profit associations such as our Club seems to me a very interesting concept of recuperation.

And I think that such a good idea must be encouraged.

Maurice Cusson
Club Canin Vieux-Montréal

Even if the Parco-Don was only to be installed in the dog park, Borough Ville-Marie rejected our proposition, saying that it could divide the donation and affect the revenu for the itinerant help movement of Ville-Marie.