City of Regina collecting on $7 million in unpaid parking fines

Some people in Regina are learning the hard way that the statute of limitations does not apply to parking tickets.

The City of Regina has been sending letters to residents notifying them of unpaid parking tickets, some of which stem from violations almost a decade ago. The cumulative average of the tickets canbe in the hundreds of dollarsfor some people.

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For Aaron Stuckelhis $600worth of fines came as a total surprise.

"I thought I had them all taken care of,"saidStuckel. "But then I get this letter, you know, five years later or four years later saying that I still owe $600. So it'sjust a bit frustrating."

Stuckel accrued many of his tickets during his time studying journalism at the Universityof Regina despite his parking pass. He said many of his tickets were successfully appealed, but with this recent notification the typical thirty day period to appeal does not apply, since these tickets are already several years overdue.

"I dealt with so many of these when I was at the U of R," said Stuckel.

At the time, he was driving his parents car.His parents in turn sent the letter they recently received on to their son. Stuckel says the letter was delivered a few months after the provincial budget was released and felt that the city hounding him and othersto pay old tickets might have something to do with the$10.3 million budget shortfall faced by the city.

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"It felt like a little bit of a cash grab by the city when times were tight for the city," said Stuckel. "I should say too, that the people at the city have been fairly understanding. This is obviously a surprise to a lot of people."

Approximately $7 million in unpaid fines

The letters state that a minimum of one ticket per month is to be paid until the balance is zero and for those who can'taccommodatethat payment structure, there is an alternative offered.

However, if the tickets are not paid theaccountowing the ticket will be forwarded to the Credit Bureau of Canada, which is a privatecompany.

"Any of the information we collect would be ownership information from the parking ticket," said Faisal Kalim, manager of parking services with thecity. "Any ownership information that the city would have the collection agency would have available to them."

Which means any information used to register your vehicle would be handed off to the collection agency.

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Despite feelings that the revved-up collection practice had something to do with the budget shortfall, Kalimsaid that is not the case. The city has been fully in charge of collecting parking fines since 2012 when the service was transferred from the Regina Police Service to the City of Regina.

The recent strategy of sending letters to people with old outstanding parking tickets started in December 2016.

"Our collections folks started with highest value accounts and they've been working their waydown to accounts that today only have one or two tickets," said Kalim.

After going through a backlog of approximately 20,000 accounts owing around $7 million the city is now processing the lower-value accounts.According to Kalim that's why more people are receiving letters in the mail now. In his experience a high value account could owe over $10,000.

Kalim said this method of collectionwill cost$20,000 to $30,000 in postage alone, though that is one of the biggest expenses.