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RECORD PHOTO BY BRETT MITCHELL
A ticket for a parking violation sits on a vehicle on Manitoba Ave. in Selkirk Monday morning. The City of Selkirk is spending thousands on legal fees to defend $25 parking tickets it has issued.
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By Austin Grabish
The City of Selkirk is spending thousands on legal fees to defend $25 parking tickets it has issued, but is still retaining a hefty amount of revenue from the fines.
Documents obtained by the Selkirk Record through a Freedom of Information request show the city spent a total of $7,127.20 on legal fees associated with defending the tickets over the last two years.
Despite the cost, the city still managed to pull in $25,100 from parking fines during 2013 and 2014, leaving the city with nearly $18,000 in revenue from the tickets.
The legal costs stem from fees the city incurs when a lawyer represents them in court and when the city receives legal advice on parking ticket related matters, the city’s CAO Duane Nicol said via email.
Currently, formal parking ticket challenges can only be made in a provincial court.
A ticketed driver can plead not guilty, or guilty with an explanation, and a provincial judge then determines if the person is guilty and what fine, if any, should be paid.
On July 15, at least two ticketed drivers pleaded guilty with an explanation in Selkirk traffic court.
Both offered explanations for why they violated parking rules, but were ultimately found guilty by a provincial judge.
The City of Selkirk’s legal counsel was asking for $200 fines to be upheld in each case, but the judge only ordered the original ticket amount of $25 to be paid, saying $200 was too outrageous for a parking ticket.
Nicol said the city sees the current expenses as reasonable and necessary given current provincial legislation that requires tickets be fought “formally” in court.
He said people have the right to challenge a ticket outside of the city’s own appeal process and added when the city gets proper legal advice and representation, it has a better chance of getting the fine paid.
Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson said the cost of a lawyer is necessary because the city has to do its due diligence and make sure parking tickets get paid.
“If we didn’t do anything on it and just left it up to people’s good faith to come in and pay them, I really don’t think we would see very many parking tickets paid,” Johannson said.
Nicol said while the city is retaining revenue from the tickets, there are other costs to consider like the salary of a bylaw enforcement officer.
“The purpose of our enforcement activity is achieving public compliance with the by-law, not issuing tickets,” he said.
Parking tickets in Selkirk are $25 if paid within 11 days, they then rise to $50 if paid within 20 days, before finally going up to $200.
The tickets are placed on vehicles parked in no-parking zones, time-restricted areas, loading zones, and fire hydrants, for example.
After 30 days, an unpaid ticket is defaulted and can be handed over to a collection agency, and the city also has the authority to place a lien on a vehicle.
The city wasn’t able to provide the total number of parking tickets issued for both years and couldn’t say how many were contested in court, because it doesn’t track that information, Nicol said.
Breaking down the numbers...
• In 2014 the city spent $3,917.20 on legal costs associated with parking tickets and collected $12,900 from tickets that year in revenue.
• In 2013 the city spent $3,210 on legal fees associated with parking tickets and collected $12,200 from the tickets the same year.
- Information provided by the City of Selkirk
-- First published in the Selkirk Record print edition August 20 2015 p.2
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