Village targets parking ticket scofflaws

Legal tweak would speed collections process 

By MARTIN WILBUR

Mount Kisco is likely to amend the village code allowing its justice court to accept a default judgment for drivers who have ignored their parking tickets in hopes of collecting thousands of dollars in fines.

It is expected that the Village Board will approve an amendment at its next meeting that would permit the Mount Kisco Justice Court to enter a guilty plea on behalf of a defendant. Before that step is taken, the village attorney’s office would send a letter to the individual at least 30 days after the deadline for them to respond to the ticket notifying them of the charge and the pending judgment. An appearance or plea within 30 days of the attorney’s notification would help to avoid the default.

Village Manager Ed Brancati said that the village needs to include language regarding a default judgment into its code in order to send a person’s delinquency to a collection agency.

“Most people pay, some don’t, and so we want to be able to send them to collections, but the attorneys felt that if we would do that, we need to first add an amendment to the code so we could get a default judgment entered in front of a judge,” Brancati said. “So, while it’s civil in nature, the default, it gets treated as a conviction.”

The village has $138,245 in unpaid parking violations over the past three years, not including any additional fines, interest and penalties that would be incurred, he said. About $40,000 in base fines from unpaid tickets are from tickets issued within the last six months and close to $60,000 of that sum are from summonses within the past year, according to Brancati. The remainder of that total is for offenses up to three years ago.

Brancati said the village already reports scofflaws who fail to pay parking tickets to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, which prohibits those drivers from renewing their vehicle registration. The proposed amendment would not change that but provide the village another tool to collect the money it is owed, he said.

There were no speakers who turned out for the Feb. 2 public hearing on the amendment to the code. Officials decided to close the hearing at that time but accept written comments for up to 20 days. Brancati said it is likely the board will vote on the amendment at the March 2 meeting.

Mayor J. Michael Cindrich said the village has been looking to create a process to collect the outstanding money from fines and penalties connected to the unpaid parking tickets.

“If you’ve been in Mount Kisco for a while, you realized at some point in time, we’ve had to forgive tens of thousands of dollars of tickets,” Cindrich said. “We don’t want that to happen again.”

Under the proposed code amendment, a default judgment and a guilty plea cannot be entered for any ticket that is more than three years past the expiration of the original plea date.