With about $8 million in unpaid tickets on the books, Saskatoon officials are considering a tougher approach.
The City of Saskatoon is considering a tougher approach when it comes to unpaid parking tickets.
The city earlier this month issued a request for information to determine whether it’s worthwhile to hire a collections agency to help recover funds.
Matt Grazier, the city’s director of community standards, confirmed in an email to The StarPhoenix that the city is evaluating “a collections-based approach to help compel payment on outstanding parking tickets.”
Firms had until Wednesday afternoon to submit their responses to a city request issued July 9 to help “gauge market appetite and to gain an understanding of industry factors related to debt collection.”
Grazier said he was limited in the comments he could provide while the request for information is still on the open market. He acknowledged that turning to a collections agency would be “a new approach” for Saskatoon when it comes to parking tickets.
Outside collection firms have in the past been employed by the city to assist with outstanding utility payments.
City staff have previously reported some $8 million in outstanding parking ticket fines. They’ve also reported to council that the funds can be difficult to pursue.
Current enforcement allows the city to designate vehicle owners with two or more outstanding fines as “scofflaws” subject to having their vehicles booted, towed and impounded.
City staff reported to council in March 2022 that there were 9,837 vehicle owners in scofflaw status.
In many cases, people no longer have active vehicle registrations, making it impossible to send the boot crew after them. Some 5,642 scofflaws had vehicles located outside Saskatoon, making it impractical for the city to pursue seizing them.
Despite these challenges, the city’s enforcement team is still managing to find targets; the last annual report from the city’s parking division noted 2,400 vehicles were impounded for unpaid parking tickets in 2023.
The city issued about 86,000 parking tickets in 2023, and collected $3.12 million in revenue from parking ticket payments.
Alongside the ticket revenue, the city collected $5 million in parking-related revenue from pay stations, the temporary reserved parking program and pre-paid parking cards.
The request for information is only to allow the city to gauge whether there’s an appetite among firms. Any contract with a collections agency in future would require a further process.
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