At least one Kamloops councillor doesn't believe the City's bus system has enough riders to justify putting $2 million in operational costs onto taxpayers' shoulders.

Nor does Ken Christian believe expansion to the Tk'emlups Indian Band will do anything to boost the number of people who ride the bus, he said Sunday.

"Our ridership is pathetically low. We need to look at that," said Christian.

And councillors contacted by The Daily News on Sunday do not want the proposed expansion to go ahead without a financial contribution from the Indian band.

B.C. Transit has notified the City it can have an additional 5,697 service hours for 2012/2013. Plus there's an offer for 2,000 handyDART hours and a custom bus for the City and TIB.

All this will cost - when operational increases are included - close to $2 million. B.C. Transit will pay for 47 per cent with City taxpayers called on to cover the rest.

Christian said the Tk'emlups land is sparsely populated save for Sun Rivers, where many of the homeowners are seniors or working families with more than one automobile.

"You're not going to get any kind of densification that is
going to support public transit that way," he said. "I'm not thinking it's the kind of development that lends itself to a large ridership."

Coun. Pat Wallace said Tk'emlups would certainly need to pay its share for the service. What that amount is would need to be negotiated and meetings have yet to take place.

"The taxpayers have made it abundantly clear that they don't want a hefty tax increase. So I think we have to see what the contributions from the band would be," she said.

Tk'emlups Chief Shane Gottfriedson could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Like Christian, Wallace questions how much additional use an expanded service would
generate. Even at the current level, bus fares don't cover the cost of running the system, she said.

Coun. Donovan Cavers believes he has a solution to the added expense. He's put forward a notice of motion to increase parking fines - for overtime parking paid within 24 hours - to $7 from $5.

The motion in this week's council agenda lists his proposed increase as $10, but Cavers lowered the number in an effort to garner support, he said. He'd like the money put into carpooling, public transit and cycling improvements.

His council colleagues don't like the idea at all. Arjun Singh and Nancy Bepple don't believe revenue should be taken from one area to pay for another.

Singh is a member of the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association's parking solutions working group. The group was formed to deal with parking issues in the city centre.

He said a one-off solution like upping fines is not the way to ease parking pressures or fund public transit.

"You don't want to do something good and have a bad effect somewhere else," said Singh.

Bepple said you can't improve any service, be it busing or otherwise, without spending money. But increasing parking fines isn't the way to ease the cost.

Kamloops Chamber of Commerce president Maurice Hindle said Cavers has good intentions, but making people pay steeper parking fines could come with a price.

He said the City should consider carefully such a change could discourage people from shopping and eating in the downtown.