CITY WARNS: PARKING TICKET SYSTEM TO BE INTEGRATED; PAY TICKETS NOW, OR IT MAY COST YOU MORE LATER

By Juan Montoya
Complaining that no one ever writes to you?
Well, within two months – if you have an overdue parking or traffic ticket – you just might get one from the Municipal Court folks at the City of Brownsville.
Don't feel bad. You're in good company.
A combination of degrading computer programs, badly handwritten parking tickets, mistakes in entering the data in the portable electronic ticket writers, and a backlog of citations ignored by drivers from here, Mexico, Canada and just about every state in the union has resulted in the city amassing an incredible $76,336 unpaid parking tickets since 2007.
Since the fine an unpaid simple parking ticket will double from the $5 ($200 if it's a handicapped space) after five days, a conservative estimate of how much the city stands to collect is about $3,096,246. Those nickles and quarters add up, don't they?
For the past two or three weeks the staff at the Municipal court have been in consultation with the city's legal department updating the system, which a staff member admits, is "broken" and trying to find a way to make all the parts of ti interface and streamline the issuance, collection  and dispensation of the huge existing volume.
Once thee have tweaked the software programming and hardware, they will begin issuing letters like the one in the prototype letter pictured here. Then, not only will the receiver of the missive have to come and answer for his parking transgressions, but they will also have to answer for any other violations (speeding, traffic) that may be in the system.
Already, the Cameron County Tax Collector-Assessor Office requires that you clean up any traffic violations you may have with the city before they will do business with you such as transferring a car title or issuing license plates. Parking tickets may be next.
It has not been easy to get a handle on the problem, city workers say. Over the course of the last six years that the parking citations have accumulated, cited cars have been sold from person to person, junked, gone out of state or into Mexico, or no longer registered with the state.
Then there's the problem of parking inspectors not having a real good handle on the exemptions for vehicles with city, state and federal license plates that have to be removed fro the system.
"We had to remove some 600 citations issued to exempt public vehicles," said Tad Hasse, the Informational Technician Tech and programming guru at the court. "That's just one category of correctable error. On the other hand, we've had tickets that have parking tickets that show they were written in 1911."
Hasse said that the court staff was sifting through the mass of citations to determine which should be pursued and which would be practically unenforceable.
For example, he said some may have exceeded the statute of limitations and may be too old to follow on, and some may have bad plates.
"We've already paid some $1,300 to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to trace down cars for us. In some cases, the cars are still out there, in others they may have already been junked, and in at least one case, the car shows up with old tickets, gets sold, and then shows up with more tickets because the new owner is also a scofflaw like the owner before."
For example, the staff has found that some 10,095 parking tickets are owed by Tamaulipas residents. Although this may seem like a lot, Hasse said that in comparison to Brownsville residents, Mexican motorists actually do make an effort to pay them.
"They may think that the unpaid tickets will show up when they cross the international bridges and they won't be allowed across," he said. "We're not there yet," he hinted, "but we may be there once we get done fixing this backlog."
Since Brownsville is a destination for out-of-state residents who come her as tourists in the cold winter months, Hasse said that the roll of scofflaws contains people from all over the United States.
"We have seven citations issued to people from Washington state, 14 for Vermont, scores of them from Oklahoma, Kansas, Oregon, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico, and a whole lot of them from Minnesota."
Once the system is clicking, letters will go out to these motorists warning them that they face fines and other penalties if they don;t cough up the fines, he said.
"We may have to go follow them to the  wheat fields of Kansas, take cheese from the ones in Wisconsin, we'll probably forgive the ones from Ohio since there's out of work, we owe the Constitution to the ones from Virginia, and of course, David Crockett was from Tennessee, and he died at the Alamo, so we might give them some consideration. I don't think we're going into Tamaulipas and battle the narcoterrorists for a parking ticket fine. Surprisingly, it's those people who we can't cross the river to go after who actually show up to pay more than the people who live here."
All kidding aside, however, Hasse said that people who owe parking tickets may be better off taking care of them now before the municipal court system is fully integrated with the other systems that will show other violations in traffic, health or nuisance ordinance violations. He reminded residents that it takes only three unpaid parking tickets over 10 days old for the vehicle to be declared a nuisance vehicle that gives parking ticket inspectors the authority to attack a mechanical boot to a car.
"Then you have to pay all the tickets you owe before you can take the boot off," he warned. "We're almost fully integrated now, and once you get the letter from the municipal court, you're whacked. Take care of your parking tickets now."