Wilmington officials say they will allow drivers to appeal parking tickets online by next spring, an effort to modernize a system that's been doggedby complaints of delays, errors and miscommunication.
The changes, among other reforms to the city's parking enforcement system announced Monday, come as ticket revenues have declined and the cityembarks on a separate attempt to collect unpaid fines from years past.
Other changesinclude sending notices when residential parking permits are about to expire, expanding the ParkMobile payment app to meters citywide, equipping parking enforcement officers with devices that will include a photo of alleged violations when issuing tickets and setting up payment plans for unpaid tickets.
The planned reforms were announced after months of criticism and recommendations fromAAA Mid Atlantic. They were listedwithout a definitive timelineby Mayor Mike Purzycki's chief of staff Tanya Washington in a memo to City Council.
The motorists' organization this year issued a reportfindingerrors in parking tickets issued, inconsistent responses to appeals from the city's Office of Constituent Services and overall poor tracking of cars that are ticketed, booted or towed.
In 2016, a city audit of its ticketing system found drivers usually waiting longer than the required 30 days for a response to an appeal.
PARKING PROBLEMS:Audit shows Wilmington parking ticket headaches
Marsha Bove, whose husband owns a business on the west side of Wilmington, said she believed a ticket he got last November was illegitimate because hehad just renewed his parking permit weeks before.
After calling the phone number on the ticket, she said she was told by an employee the ticket would be dismissed. A month later, Bove and her husband received a letter notifying them the ticket still existed. She filed an appeal, which Wilmington requires to be done by mail, but never heard back.
Weeks later, the couple got another ticket notification — this time the fine had a $20 late fee tacked on.
RESTAURANT DEFENDERS:
"Ihate to give up, but I wrote out a check for $60, and Iput it in the enclosed self-addressed envelope," Bove said. "I figured, 'OK, we're done, this is it.'"
That was in mid-January. By the end of the month the envelope had been returned as undeliverable and Bove had gotten another letter increasing the violation to $80. It would take another several months and the intervention of Ken Grant, AAA Mid-Atlantic's public and government affairs manager, for the city to issue a final letter clearing the ticket, Bove said.
"It's like they never got the appeal," she said. "I never ever heard anything back from that."
An online appeals system would solve most of the city's parking appeals issues by making all appeals trackable,Jennifer Prado, director of constituent services, told Wilmington City Council members on Monday. Under that system, in-person or mail-in appeals would still be an option.
The city's tracking of tickets appears unreliable. Records provided to The News Journal from Prado's office indicate zero pending parking ticket appeals nearly every month for the past six years, despite Prado acknowledging a backlog of appeals that was not cleared until this January at the earliest.
She also said appeals are sometimes lost in the mail, or received but not logged electronically.
"There was a time where it took quite a bit of time" before the city would respond to an appeal, she said. "We are next-day now. All the appeals that came in today, they will be processed tomorrow. The decision letter is generated overnight and printed the very next morning."
AAAalso found Wilmington's $40 tickets to be more expensive than those in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Annual parking revenues have been on a steady decline— from $3.5million for nearly 69,000 tickets six years ago to $2.5million for fewer than 50,000 tickets in the fiscal year that ended in June, according to city records.
The city is moving to recoupmoney owed on about67,000 outstanding tickets from the past seven years, and is preparing to expand a contract this fallwith Conduent, Wilmington's red-light camera contractor, to collect those fines.
Officials expect to collect $300,000 from the effort, according to the city budget.
Brett Taylor, Wilmington's director of finance, said officials will confirm those drivers have exhausted the appeals process before the fines are sought.
He said the decline in ticketing revenue has little effect on the city's $160 million budget.
"We anticipate it will continue to decline, we don't consider it a primary revenue source," Taylor said.
Jeanne Kuang covers Wilmington for The News Journal. Contact herat jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2476. Follow her on Twitter at @JeanneKuang.
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