Parking enforcement goes old school
City officers issuing handwritten tickets with outdated information until new system arrives
move to modernize Santa Fe’s parking system is forcing the men and women who issue citations to step back in time.
The city’s parking enforcement officers have been issuing handwritten citations with outdated — and inaccurate — information while the Parking Division transitions to a state-of-the-art system with a host of capabilities, including mobile license plate readers designed to catch parking scofflaws who may be subject to booting and towing.
Division Director Noel Correia said Monday the decision to cross out the obsolete information in the old handwritten parking citations the city had in stock rather than order new citations with the correct information was a financial one.
“I don’t have that kind of money to waste,” he said.
Parking enforcement officers had been using hand-held devices that generated citations automatically after they punched in the license plate number and other information, but those devices were so antiquated that the city had only two in working condition, Correia said.
“The ones that they currently were using, which are like 15, 18, 20 years old, you can’t even find parts for them or anything,” he said.
Correia, who joined the city in February 2015, didn’t know the last time parking enforcement officers used only handwritten citations, but “I would say more than 10 years ago.”
Correia said the move this
year to a new system to track citations and revenues, which cost $645,000, should be completed this week or next, so it was cheaper to use the out-ofdate handwritten citations in the meantime. He said parking enforcement officers started using the handwritten citations “across the board” last week.
“We can’t just throw away public money by ordering carelessly rather than instituting certain changes that are legal,” he said. “You’re issuing [the old handwritten tickets] for a very short time and then the new system comes on board. Otherwise, you have a whole big stock of these boxes that you’re throwing out, and that’s money wasted.”
On average, the city issues 67 parking citations a day.
Parking enforcement officers are supposed to scratch out the obsolete information, such as the amount of the parking fine, and write in the up-to-date information.
But in at least two separate occasions, a reporter from The New Mexican found handwritten citations where parking enforcement officers forgot to cross out Municipal Court as the place to protest the fine.
“We used to take care of them here, but we don’t anymore,” said a woman who answered the phone for the number that is listed for Municipal Court on the handwritten parking citation. “It’s been over two years since we’ve done parking.”
Correia said his employees may have inadvertently failed to cross out the old information.
“There was no line drawn across to indicate to the recipient of the citation that that information is crossed out?” he asked. “The officer may have missed that. An error could have occurred.”
The handwritten citations also list 120 S. Federal Place as the location of the violations bureau, which parking enforcement officers are also supposed to cross out.
Correia said there isn’t enough room to write in the bureau’s new address at the Market Station building in the Santa Fe Railyard but that it’s on the accompanying envelope.
If parking enforcement officers forget to write in the new fines, many of which have increased, Correia said his division will honor the lower fine.
“If the officer forgot to cross out the old amount and put the new higher amount, then it’s on us,” he said, adding that he wasn’t aware of any such instances.
While the crossed-out parking citations may create confusion among some, Correia said the new system will bring Santa Fe into modern times.
The new system includes present-day hand-held devices that generate citations electronically, he said.
“We are transitioning to a brand new system that allows people to pay by web, to contest their tickets by web, pay by phone — they don’t even have to call us,” he said. “It’s all done electronically, so it’s a very, very 21st century system that we’ve finally gotten on board.”