North Battleford Community Safety Officer (CSO) supervisor Ross MacAngus at council’s meeting Monday. MacAngus said it's in residents' best interest to pay parking tickets when they are issued. (Angela Brown/battlefords NOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

In the chambers

City putting stop to delinquent unpaid parking tickets

Apr 9, 2019 | 9:21 AM

Those who are loath to pay their outstanding parking tickets thinking they will eventually be waived will be in for a shock in light of the city’s new proactive strategy aimed at cracking down on offenders.

Effective immediately, the City of North Battleford will be getting tough on all unpaid parking tickets. Offenders will need to pay, or face the consequences.

“The past practice has been, for parking and other violation tickets, the revenue was recorded when it was collected,” Mayor Ryan Bater said, following council’s meeting Monday. “The standing practice has been to write-off tickets after a year. That’s no longer going to be the case.”

The decision will better keep track of the amount outstanding, and put more teeth into the policy to get people to pay their tickets.

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The mayor said the city will now be recording the revenue when the ticket is issued. He said if payment isn’t made by the end of the year, it will be set up as on the city’s accounts receivables list to be collected.

“We will be taking steps to enforce that,” Bater added. “We will not be writing off (the unpaid tickets) after a certain amount of time.”

Bater said while there will be some allowance for bad debts, the city plans to collect payments for all unpaid parking tickets nonetheless.

The mayor added the city issues “a lot of warnings,” and is able to tow and impound a vehicle for unpaid tickets.

“We will be exercising that because the amount that is outstanding is getting up to around $300,000 at this point,” he added. “We have a responsibility to collect.”

Finance Director Steve Brown stated in his report that as of Dec. 31, 2018, the unpaid tickets balance was $285,845. The balance written at the end of December was $267,404. Together this brings the total of unpaid tickets amount to $553,249.

All unpaid balances not written off have been set up as revenue as of Dec. 31, 2018, with a bad debt allowance of 20 per cent. Brown indicated outstanding parking tickets can be enforced anywhere in the city.

He said previously there was an unwritten policy in place that tickets were written off after one year if they were unpaid to improve efficiency, but that will no longer be the practice.

In the future, the unpaid tickets balances will also be on the city’s financial statement “for more accurate tracking and better transparency,” to council and the public, stated Brown in his report.

North Battleford Community Safety Officer (CSO) supervisor Ross MacAngus said during the meeting for those who don’t pay their ticket or respond to follow-up warning letters, a $40 ticket can escalate to become a $70 ticket as soon as it goes to the court summons stage, so it’s in a person’s best interest to pay promptly when they receive their ticket.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW