The city of Hartford’s use this summer of new technology to collect on old, unpaid parking tickets has paid off to the tune of nearly $100,000 so far, parking authorities say.
Since June, enforcement teams from the Hartford Parking Authority and its parking subcontractor have been cruising city streets, aiming license plate-recognition cameras at vehicles to identify parking scofflaws who combined owe the city more than $19 million in unpaid tickets.
Through August, the HPA says it has collected $98,266 in past-due fines – many dating back more than a decade – more than triple the $27,854 collected in the same three-month period last year. In the past year, the city has recovered more than $1.5 million in unpaid parking fines.
New Haven uses similar technology to get parking scofflaws to pay up.
“To collect nearly $100,000 in the first 90 days greatly exceeded expectations,” Mayor Pedro E. Segarra said in a statement Tuesday. “Efficient collection of parking citations by the Hartford Parking Authority benefits residents and visitors by keeping meter and garage fees as low as possible.”
HPA CEO Mark K. McGovern said motorists have accumulated 287,283 unpaid parking citations totaling $19,059,357 potentially due to the city, with some citations issued as far back as 1996.
Republic Parking System is the parking authority’s contractor enforcing the city’s onstreet parking. Republic runs the vehicles equipped with recognition cameras.
The HPA currently mails multiple violation notices to citation holders during a 90-day period.
Now, the HPA will begin using Citation Collection Services (CCS) to collect debt older than 90 days, McGovern said.
Parking officials say all license-plate data collected by detector cameras are deleted at the end of each daily work shift.
Scofflaws’ vehicles are towed and held until the past-due fines are paid, officials said.
