Committee says Milwaukee is facing $41 million in unpaid parking citations

 

MILWAUKEE (CBA 58) -- We are well into the new year and the city of Milwaukee is holding to their word of issuing more parking citations this year, anticipating it to bring in an additional $2 million.

However, the city is seeing a trend of people not paying those citations, which is creating challenges.

At Thursday's meeting, the Public Works Committee revealed the city has $41 million worth of unpaid parking citations.

District 4 Alderman Robert Bauman asked the Public Works Department what their plan is to collect that money as it impacts the city's budget.

The Public Works Department responded, saying they've made the citation payments easily accessible for drivers online and are looking for new ways to hold people accountable for those unpaid tickets.

Public Works says during last week's snow emergency alone, they cited 2,700 parked cars.

"The larger issue of how to get that much money back from people who don’t necessarily live in the city is a problem we will have to deal with," said Chuck Schumacher with the Department of Public Works.

Another issue comes from private towing companies not paying the city's towing fees, saying some companies owe as much as $99,000.

The city already increases certain parking citation fees after they are not paid after a certain amount of time, but the question remains on what further action will be taken to crack down on those millions of dollars' worth of unpaid fees.