Six months of outstanding Kamloops parking fines nears $80,000
The City of Kamloops has a parking problem, but it's not a lack of spaces.
City Hall has no collection agency to turn to, meaning the city will either go to court or tickets are written off entirely.
A total $76,550 in outstanding fines from nearly 10,800 individual tickets remains on city books under the current system, according to information from a Freedom of Information request.
According to bylaw manager Will Beatty, that's just from the last six months. Anything older has to go to court as the city can't collect it any other way, and it's unlikely a single ticket will get that far.
"(Staff) usually go through and write them off as they expire and we don't have the ability to enforce on them, meaning the evidence is dated and no court would allow us to proceed with those violations," Beatty told iNFOnews.ca.
"A lot of times, it's not worth a $40 ticket to swear the information in front of a judge."
The parking ticket statistics come as the city considers not only increasing its fines, but finding ways to collect outstanding tickets without going through court. Most of those fines aren't related to going over metered parking times.
An iNFOnews.ca Freedom of Information request sought the total outstanding parking fine amounts, along with the top ten drivers with outstanding metre parking fines.
Altogether, the top timed-parking offenders account for 8,000 individual tickets from January to September.
While they only account for a total $7,230 in outstanding fines, the results are skewed by vehicles with no licence plates or out-of-province vehicles. That category alone accounts for $4,825 outstanding with 7,905 tickets.
The other nine range from nine to 16 outstanding tickets and fine totals from $20 to $510. The names of the offenders were redacted from the Freedom of Information request.
Beatty said offending drivers are sometimes taken to court in an effort to recover the fines, but others fines are sometimes written off from city accounts. He also said the process would be simpler if the city could default to a collections agency for unpaid tickets rather than court, and it's often done in other cities already.
"The parking management strategy that was introduced identified that as well, so increasing fines and changing the ticketing system so you don't have to go to court. Somebody can be deemed guilty after 14 days and it can go to adjudication if need be," Beatty said.
For now, Kamloops has relatively low parking rates and over-time fines.
A ticket paid within the month is $20 and reduced by half if paid within 24 hours. Anything beyond 30 days will cost $40. The proposed increase would double the fines to $80 and only be reduced to $50 if paid within the day, if the new policy is approved by city council.
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