The city has agreed to pay severance to two former parking authority managers who were let go in May.
Lawyers for former General Manager Dale Fraser and Assistant General Manager Al Bazar issued a statement on Thursday saying:
"We can confirm that Dale Fraser and Al Bazar have reached a negotiated settlement with the City of Calgary relating to the termination of their employment by the City. It is important to note that their employment was terminated without cause and that, accordingly, they were entitled by law to a payment in lieu of notice. The amount of the settlement is confidential and both parties have agreed not to release its details but we can state that the settlement reflects the combined 51 years of dedicated and exemplary service which Dale and Al jointly gave to the City."
When the system was introduced in the fall of 2007, there were predictions that the city could make millions of dollars marketing the homegrown technology worldwide.
City of Calgary lawyers have been working on the issue on behalf of the Parking Authority.
Ward 4 Councillor, Gael MacLeod is on the Parking Authority Committee for City Council and she says she is pleased the severance pay issue has been resolved.
MacLeod says that Fraser and Bazar were employees and therefore the severance pay had to be negotiated.
She says they were fired because of a culture change within the Calgary Parking Authority.
"Moving from an authority to a service model and that requires different people. This was not, and I think we have tried to be very, very clear about this, this was not a performance issue, there was no cause for letting the employees go. This was purely about moving forward with a different type of service model," said MacLeod.
Even though a deal has been reached, the legal wrangling continues over who owns the technology rights to the ParkPlus system.
Back in May the city said that no one or two people can lay claim to the invention of the parking system and that it was created with input from several people.
Lawyers for Fraser and Bazar say that there is no dispute that the ParkPlus system was invented by the two men but an outstanding intellectual property issue remains between the two sides.
