Ketchum has issued $430,000 in parking tickets since it converted to computerized booking in 2000, but more than $100,000 of that has never been collected.
Police Sgt. Dave Kassner said most of these unpaid tickets are from before June 2009 when a person needed to have three or more tickets overdue for at least 90 days to be put on the boot list.
In 2009, that changed to only needing one ticket overdue at least 90 days to be booted.
Kassner said the number of offenders greatly decreased at that point, but those with just a mere single ticket or two prior to 2009 were never put on the boot list and therefore were never sought out.
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These multi-year-old offenders are off the hook because the city switched its ticketing system on Aug. 19 to Park Track, a BlackBerry-sized device that can actually read license plates. And the city doesn't want to carry over these old parking tickets onto the new system, a conversion that would cost a few thousand dollars. Plus, Kassner said, trying to enforce payment of these really old tickets isn't worth it. And these aren't repeated offenders, but one-time offenders.
However, the city is hiring a collection agency to seek out the 150 people on the boot list who refuse to pay and owe a total of $33,000. The agency will take a 30 percent cut as its fee.
Kassner said a collection agency has never been used before. But, from here on out, anyone on the boot list for a year without paying up will be notified that a collection agency will be hired to collect the money. Kassner said he expects drivers to pay up before the agency is needed because that would appear on a person's credit report, something that could prove more harmful than shelling out the average $220 owed.
He said most offenders are business owners or employees who parked overtime in spaces with two-hour limits.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
