City losing out on $1M in parking fines

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Thousands of parking tickets each year in Indianapolis go unpaid-- a problem that the city has tried to fix for years but hasn't been able to.

It's money that's badly needed at a time when the city is cutting its budget. So why isn't Indianapolis being more aggressive in collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking fines when 68 percent of all citations aren't paid?

The city contracts with Denison, a private company, for five enforcement officers to write parking tickets. Four of them patrol the mile square downtown, another works in Broad Ripple. Each usually writes between 50 and 60 tickets a day.

Under Denison's contract, officers must total a monthly quota of 5,500 tickets, but they usually write more; closer to 8,000 tickets are written each month in Indianapolis. That adds up to two million dollars in fines doled out each year. But in the numbers I-Team 8 dug up, we found the city is lucky to see even a third of the fines ever paid; just $733,000 in 2008.

We asked Mayor Greg Ballard why the city isn't doing a better job of collecting those parking fines.

"Those are hard to collect actually, admitted Ballard. "We've had collection agencies on that a long time now. It's been an historical problem for the city. Last year we redoubled our efforts to go after them. It's a tough nut to crack frankly."

In December the city began a daily parking citation court pilot program. Those who hadn't paid received a summons; those with the most tickets were called in first. Most didn't show. In fact of the 100 summons that go out every day, only about three percent of the people even bother to show up.

Several times when our cameras were there, not a single person showed up.

Where that money could be going:
Items	approx. price
(2) Ladder Fire Trucks	$1,200,000
-or-
(15) Snow Plows	$1,300,000
-or-
(20) Police officers and patrol cars	$1,300,000
-or-
Fix 92,857 potholes	$1,300,000

Manny Mendez is a deputy controller with the City of Indianapolis who agrees the low turnout is disappointing.

"But that's the numbers appearing in court," reminds Mendez. "We're also having folks that are mailing in their payment, calling in their payment, doing it online."

"Where is all this money really going to? What good is it actually doing for us as citizens?" asks Matt Stone, a student at IUPUI.

He's part of a class action lawsuit against Marion County's Traffic Court. The Parking Citation court is also named in that suit. A private contractor named T-2 runs the court and sends out the notices. T-2 keeps eight percent of every fine it manages to bring in. The rest goes to the general fund.

"My main concern is mishandling of privatization, where the people making the money are actually managing the court system that's being set up," says Stone.

When asked why people aren't paying Mendez can only scratch his head. "It's another opportunity for me to gather more data, because we're going to start hearing the reasons why, I really just can't put my finger on it," he says.

"What I've heard the most is the economy," says Cindy Scheich, who runs the program for T-2. " People have lost their jobs. We're going to take that into consideration obviously.' T-2 often helps set up payment plans and waives late fees for people who show up to court.

I-Team 8 wanted to know who owed the most in parking fines, the city provided the list. At the top, one person had 16 tickets, owing nearly $800.

We knocked on a lot of doors and made a lot of phone calls. One attorney wouldn't say if a BMW with hundreds of dollars in tickets was his.

"I haven't confirmed or nor denied I have a BMW," he first said over the phone.

In an email later he admitted he did, saying: Those tickets, $400.00 worth, have now been paid.

We heard a lot of excuses. People told us someone else had been driving the car. One person even said he had been in hiding, fearing for his family's safety and wasn't having his mail forwarded. Others told us to simply get lost.

"It's none of your business," snorted one person we contacted before hanging up.

But Manny Mendez promises to keep trying.

"But we've given mail, phone, internet, carrier pigeons is the last thing we can do, he laughs. "But I'll try anything as long as I can get you to pay the citation."

Mayor Ballard says T-2 will be re-evaluated when the contract comes up again, but they just renegotiated a three year deal this past summer.

Anyone with unpaid parking tickets faces having their vehicle registration suspended. But out of more than seven million vehicles on the road in Indiana, that option was only exercised 558 times last year, but Indianapolis officials are threatening to use it even more this year.