Fund This Story : Somerville Parking Tickets

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Dear fellow car drivers friends and neighbors,

The City is counting on you to park longer than 48 hours in one place, to not remember which day is street cleaning on your side, and to forget to give your out-of-town friends and relatives visitor passes instantly when they arrive at your place. I know what you're thinking, that the City wants its residents, workers, and visitors to abide by the laws, not break them.

Alas, the FY2010 municipal budget (pdf) has already been written with the expectation of approx $8.7 million from parking fines (up $1.5 million from last year) plus change in surcharges, towing fees, and moving violations. So, unless you want the city to face cut-backs in police, fire, and education, you'd better start parking within 20 feet of an intersection and leaving your car on the street during your week-long vacation. The City has even adjusted its parking policies to help facilitate this new revenue increase.

But seriously, if the City is going to rely on this regressive form of taxation, shouldn't we at least expect the burden to fall somewhat equitably around the city? And how does Somerville compare to surrounding communities in terms of its parking enforcement policies? If you'd like to help us find out the answers to these and other parking related questions, then please consider pledging what you can to our new $500 fund-raiser to hire an investigative journalist. To join our campaign or leave a comment, please head on over to the Somerville Voices blog and thanks!

Sincerely,
Barry Rafkind

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

It is a revenue source, whether they put it in the budget or not. Should they just count it as windfall or something?

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Whatever fine revenue appears should be counted as extra money, but I don't see how the City can predict how much in fines will be generated over the course of the year. Unless, perhaps the city has certain strategies or policies to ensure that it gets what it needs. What do you think?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I don't see how the City can predict how much in fines will be generated over the course of the year.

statistics and the law of large numbers, perhaps?

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Do you have any reason to believe that there will be an approx 21% increase in cars/drivers/violations this year to match that projected rise in parking ticket revenues? That figure makes me quite skeptical that the prediction is based on car trends alone.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Didn't they just this very month decide to go through with a plan to change permitting so that there will be more places where people are likely to get ticketed? So, maybe not an "increase in cars/drivers," but definitely an increase in the places where you CAN get ticketed, combined with estimates on violations based on - making a wild guess here - historical data about parking violations. So SINISTER!

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Yes, excellent point. Changes were made to expand permit-parking area and increase rates and time periods of meters in business districts. And these wide-ranging changes were made hastily without much public process through the Traffic Commission, a body with only one publicly elected member (Ald. Trane).

[arrowintwolakes.livejournal.com]

If there were some correlation to an increase in number of registered cars in Somerville proportionate to the proposed increased "earmark" of expected fine revenue, then it could make sense. However, the amount of expected revenue seems to be much larger than one would expect. I could be wrong; people could have worked out the math very thoroughly based on past acceptability or unacceptability correlations between proposed earmarking and actual revenue, and all of this is taken into consideration and weighed carefully before announcing such a steep increase. But one, I suppose, would have to spend an inordinate amount of time investigating that to make any cogent report.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Plus historical data on how much they've got in the past, I bet.

[birdmaddgirl.livejournal.com]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that any city is required by law to include *all* revenues in the budget. This necessitates an estimate of fines and fees collected for any purpose (i.e., they do the same thing with any service-based fee or fine for a violation, not just parking). And that the budget must be balanced to account for how those revenues will be spent. Somerville is not allowed to treat fines as "extra money" -- that is against the law and all ethics of accounting.

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that enlightenment! So once the city commits to a certain amount of fine and fee revenue, is then obligated to do its best to reach those goals, even that means changing or creating rules to ensure enough car drivers break the law, get tickets, and pay them? What about the ethics of that?

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

They're not "committing" to anything. This isn't "We WILL collect this revenue", this is "This is the revenue we THINK we'll collect." It would help, before formulating conspiracy theories, to understand how governments actually work. It's not like in the movies.

They're looking at the historical data and projecting what will happen based on that data, which they have to do, by law. Almost invariably, these estimates are wrong, usually by a wide margin. Just ask the MBTA.

There is no way to guarantee a certain amount of money from parking tickets. Police officers do not have "quotas" of tickets, not only because that's illegal but also because people inevitably contest these tickets, which costs more. The more people contesting the tickets, the more money it costs. You'd be surprised how often a city actually loses money when it issues a parking ticket.

I wonder, did your look at the city's budget happen to take a look at what they expect traffic court costs to be? Betcha it wipes out most of those estimated ticket gains.

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

For someone preaching about the importance of understanding government, I'm surprised that you're not aware that parking tickets are actually handed out here by parking enforcement officers, not police.

Also, parking ticket appeals are handled through the Traffic and Parking Dept., not a court. According to the FY10 budget (linked above), the total increase in the T&P budget (excluding ordinance maintenance) between FY09 and FY10 is $285,656 compared with the expected revenue gain from parking tickets of approx $1.5 million. Doesn't look like the costs even came close to wiping out the gains.

As far as guaranteeing the expected revenue increase, the city has already changed its parking policies and budgeted for additional personnel. Clearly, the City is being proactive about this.

I'm sure you are correct that it is expensive for the City to deal with appeals. That just means there's an incentive to issue tickets in ways that do not trigger appeals, and there's a disincentive for making the appeals process easy to use. I have no experience with the appeals process, I'm just talking about the economics of this here.

[birdmaddgirl.livejournal.com]

No, the city is required to submit a revised budget adjusted to reflect actual revenues (usually at mid-year) and an updated projection of revenues for the rest of the year based on data from collections to that point in time. The city is never "obligated" to collect a specific amount; they are required to account for that money responsibly in their budget -- which is both ethical and reflective of the rights of taxpayers to accurate information.

If you would like to do some research, any introductory non-profit accounting textbook will provide you with extensive detail about how budgeting for government and city organizations is handled in a general sense. Visit a local college bookstore or library and flip through a book for an hour or so. It seems your project could benefit from more extensive information about the processes before you start making judgments, whether positive, negative, or neutral, on Somerville.

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

It makes sense that the City needs to adjust its spending to actual revenues, but that doesn't lessen its incentive to try to meet projections on which programs and salaries depend.

I am merely expressing my personal preference that the City only craft its parking policies to deter parking violations and not as a revenue generator as it is doing now. I wonder how you feel about that?

[birdmaddgirl.livejournal.com]

I feel that governments should handle their revenues with as much budgetary transparency as possible. And I feel that citizens should educate themselves on the processes and standard practices of the government, particularly if they want their "personal preferences" or feelings to be taken seriously.

I have not reviewed any material regarding the decision-making process for Somerville parking violation fees (including recent changes to such fees and fines), and so I do not presume to make an uninformed judgment on whether the City is, in fact, using parking violations as a "revenue generator," except in the sense that this is a normal activity of government that does, in fact, generate revenue (one of the few).

The City's "incentive to try to meet projections" is based entirely on what you have already mentioned - "programs and salaries." Fees and fines cannot be used as a way to artificially inflate the budget - that is part of what accounting ethics and audits prevent. Somerville's spending is not based on what it generates via fees and fines - if it were, there would not be much of a city government. Contrary to some of your sensationalist commentary (oh no we better park next to fire hydrants!), it would be against standard accounting practices for the City to base the bulk of its operating budget on projected fines.

Here's the summary version: Facts about governmental accounting practices matter more than feelings in this discussion.

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

You speak of the importance about education, yet you seem satisfied with your ignorance about the process and motives by which our city has just dramatically changed it parking policies. To be taken seriously, one must practice what one preaches.

The City of Somerville does not rely primarily on fines and fees for revenues, but it has boosted them in this budget cycle to help fill the gaps. The proof is in the budget itself, linked from my post above as well as the Mayor's May 4th budget presentation (http://www.somervillema.gov/cos_content/documents/SpecialBOAMeetingMayorsPresentation5-4-2009.pdf) (see slide 13).

In this Jun 30th SJ article (http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/x1885874713/Somerville-aldermen-split-on-citywide-permit-parking) about the city's plan to make resident-permit parking city-wide, Ald. "Roche said if the plan, recommended by the Traffic Commission, does not go into effect by Aug. 1, the city would lose $10,000 to $15,000 a month in much needed revenue." Clearly, these parking changes are being made for financial reasons, not primarily to improve our parking system. Now that you have the facts, how do you feel about them?