What appears to be a cost saving measure for the Royal Canadian Mint, may actually wind up costing the City of Nelson hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As the City began budget talks on Friday at a committee of the whole meeting, chief financial officer Colin McClure told the city of the mint’s plan to change the weight of the loonie and toonie.
“I heard about it just the other day which is a bit of a blow,” said McClure.
Even though manager of communications for the mint Alex Reeves said the change in the density of the coins will be “imperceptible” to the general public, it will have an impact on equipment like parking meters.
McClure said the city’s newer parking meters can be re-calibrated with the help of a $10 kit; the older machines have an outdated interior mechanism.
“About 433 parking meters should be rehauled with the help of a kit and the kits are 10 bucks, so that’s about 4,300 bucks,” said McClure. “And then there are about 312 parking meters that cannot be brought up to speed with the calibration kit because they are outdated.”
The City may have to look at purchasing new meters to replace the ones that will become useless, which could cost the city anywhere between $100,000 and $500,000.
McClure said while it might be interesting to pursue meters like those being used in Vancouver where people can pay over their phones, Nelson is more of a loonies and toonies market.
“Some of the new ones down in Vancouver are pretty flash,” said McClure. “I don’t necessarily think that we need to go that route. Yeah it would be pretty cool to be able to pay for parking with your phone but that’s when it’s $6 or $7 an hour and it’s going to cost you $20 to park for three hours.”
He said the city may explore purchasing older machines from places like Vancouver who have recently gone through system upgrades.
The mint said they went through a consultation process with equipment manufacturers and that the city should consult with the manufacturers about the outcomes of the testing.
“When we’re talking about the change in density we’re talking about fractions of a gram,” said Reeves. “It’s imperceptible to the Canadian public and to anyone that handles the coin manually. If it’s weighed carefully by weighing equipment of any kind you could perhaps a detect a variation in weight, but it’s very negligible.”
Reeves said an important part of the testing was to ensure that all equipment would be able to accept both old and new coins.
The new coins save money by using a multi-ply plated coin — which is a process unique to the mint. The same process is used for quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies.
The mint is aiming to introduce the new coins early this year.