Syracuse Common Councilors Monday decided to stick with the company that helps the city with parking enforcement, ticketing, and immobilizing vehicles for another three years. The agreement with Paylock didn’t come without questions about whether the city’s getting its money’s worth.
The numbers would seem to indicate the city is having success in issuing parking tickets. but the trouble is getting violators to pay up. Councilor Nader Maroun says there are about 80,000 outstanding tickets worth about $6 million.
"Those numbers are growing, and we're not getting the money that we should be getting," Maroun said. "Out of respect for the people who pay tickets, I felt that somebody needed to say, hey, wait a minute. Why should be continue with this company."
The agreement with Paylock was done with a waiver of competitive bid, meaning the city didn’t seek other options. Paylock started doing business with the city in 2009. Maroun says next time around, the city should look elsewhere to see if they can do a better job collecting on those overdue tickets.
"Unless you put it out for an RFP [request for proposals], and we continually do waivers with the same company, you're wanting better results with the same people. I don't know how that changes."
Part of the problem, he says, is tracking down those with three or more tickets who are eligible for immobilization, or booting.
"By that time, 100 days has passed, someone may have moved out of our city," Maroun said. "It becomes difficult because you can only boot in the City of Syracuse and on public property. You can't boot on private property. My feeling is we need to be more aggressive."
Maroun says one idea is to file liens against violators.
"The argument was made the other day is that it's costly to do that. I agree," Maroun said. "But the fact of the matter is...even if we were able to collect $3 million of the $6 million, that paves a lot of roads. That fixes a lot of water main breaks."
The city will continue to explore other options while making the most of its three-year agreement with Paylock.
