The cost of a parking ticket will be going up by $10 in Regina starting July 1. That decision was made at Tuesday night’s special council meeting to revise the city budget following a $10.3-million loss in provincial funding.
City services executive director Kim Onrait said that additional revenue is a secondary concern for the ticket increase.
“If compliance isn’t met, yes it will increase revenue, but that’s secondary. First and foremost is to keep our community safe, and keep the flow of traffic moving,” Onrait explained.
Last year parking tickets resulted in the city making $2.3 million. However, not all the parking ticket money has been collected.
There are $7 million in unpaid parking tickets dating back to 2006. That’s a $4 million leap in the amount of unpaid tickets since the end of 2013.
READ MORE: Regina drivers owe $3M in unpaid parking fines
“We give the individual every opportunity we can to voluntarily comply with paying the ticket,” Onrait said.
Onrait added that as of 2006 the city has been able to use a variety of collection methods to get that money. It just takes a long time to implement these methods.
“Some of those tools would include seizure and sale of vehicles, putting a liens on vehicles we use a collection agency now which was not used prior,” he said.
The implementation time of these tools varies from case to case, but Onrait said it is faster for people with more tickets.
This amount of unpaid tickets comes from a “number” of repeat offenders, as well as numerous people with one or two outstanding tickets, according to Onrait.
Statistically, having $7 million in unpaid parking tickets means roughly half of Regina’s 236,481 people have an unpaid $55 ticket.