Who Should Get The Boot???? (Part 4) [with update]

The owner of this vehicle owes 
the city either $890 or $1,760
in parking ticket fees from the
 past year!

The picture of this BOOT-less, double-ticketed car at the corner of 6th and Warren was taken this morning.  Those two $10 meter violation tickets on the windshield were issued in the past two days, and a record of them appear on the city's online parking ticket payment portal, which is available on the Hudson Parking Bureau's webpage.  There have been some other tickets issued to this car as well. 

The vehicle has a total of 43 outstanding parking tickets.  FORTY THREE UNPAID parking tickets dating back to March 14th of LAST YEAR!

They include:  

6 recent (issued in the past 30 days) meter violations at $10 each

15 overdue (over 30 days) meter violations at $45 each

1 overdue Wrong Side Parking ticket at $55 each

19 overdue meter tickets at $4.54 each (not a typo)

2 Wrong Side Parking tickets at $4.54 each (not a typo)

The owner of the vehicle has not paid any of the 43 parking tickets issued by the Hudson Police Department in the past year and two days.  According to the Parking Bureau's online portal, the owner of the car owes the City of Hudson a total of $890.

I called the Parking Bureau and asked what the policy was regarding installing a BOOT on a vehicle.  I was told, as I heard the city's mayor mention a few weeks ago, that it took 3 unpaid tickets overdue by 45 days to get a BOOT.  I also asked if the several overdue tickets priced at $4.54 on this car was some sort of mistake or typo.  I was not offered a response other than being directed to FOIL for an answer. 

If there is a numbers glitch in the system and those 21 long-overdue tickets from March and April of last year should actually be priced at $45 and $55, instead of $4.54, the total owed on this car is considerably higher than $890.  Instead of $95.34 at the $4.54 amount, the amount of the 19 tickets at $45 and 2 tickets at $55 is $965.  If there is indeed a mistake and the Parking Bureau (now aware of the mistake) repairs that mistake, the owner of the car owes $1,760 to settle the 43 unpaid tickets, 39 of which are overdue. 

Notice that the vehicle has a 2023 Parking Permit hanging inside, a permit that the Parking Bureau likely issued in late December last year or early January of this year.  The City of Hudson issued this vehicle a Parking Permit so that it could park for free in city parking lots while it had 39 OUTSTANDING PARKING TICKETS TOTALLING SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS, IF NOT OVER A THOUSAND DOLLARS (it has received just 4 tickets so far this year).  Presumably, the Parking Bureau accepted some sort of payment from the owner of the car for the $250 Parking Permit now displayed in it.

The Hudson Parking Bureau, as you can imagine, is a big revenue machine for the city.  In 9 years, I have never once seen anyone from the Parking Bureau at an Informal Common Council meeting.  Never a monthly report on how things are going at the Bureau or how revenue collection is going; never any questions to the Bureau from the council or the public.  At the September 2022 Informal Council Meeting, Heather Campbell, the head of the Treasurer's Office, offered this in the middle of her report:  "Revenues for parking tickets lagged at 52% of budget and were down 25% from a year ago.  She said she would contact the Parking Bureau to find the cause."

Then in November, Heather had this to say about issues with the Parking Bureau's new parking ticket collection system:

No one from the Parking Bureau was at that meeting to explain what issues they were having collecting ticket revenue.  Instead, the City Treasurer told us what she thought was going on at the Parking Bureau.

Update 3/18: The 21 tickets, each strangely priced at $4.54, have all been removed from this car's account.  The day I informed the Parking Bureau of this anomaly, someone at the Bureau decided they were a mistake and had them deleted.  Now the owner of the car owes the City of Hudson just $815 for 24 tickets dating back to May 16 of last year, or 10 months ago.  It appears that the owner did not have to pay for those 21 tickets priced at $4.54, which, at their correct amount, would have totaled (as I wrote above) $965.  But, of course, I could be wrong.  Perhaps they were already paid for.  Regardless, something is obviously wrong with the current ticket payment system.