Why not paying a Kamloops parking ticket still has few consequences

Kamloops drivers will get dinged for a parking fine paid too late, but those never paid at all might not have consequences.

While the city could resort to taking a delinquent driver to court, it won’t be filed with a collections agency and it won’t impact your credit.

City council is mulling whether to increase parking rates and fines.

Coun. Mike O’Reilly said they had asked staff to find ways to recover the money from the unpaid tickets, but a recent staff report detailing proposed changes does not mention whether tickets will be sent to a collections agency.

“That is a gap and hopefully it will be filled,” O’Reilly said. “It’s a lengthy process to make big changes like that, but I believe we have to make sure we can collect our debts.”

According to the report, staff expect increasing the fees would pull parking enforcement out of the red into a revenue-generator for city hall. Unchanged, the city expects to use $428,000 from reserves just to enforce parking rules in 2026.

“This is not sustainable and will fully deplete the (parking) reserves within two to three years at the current rate,” the report reads.

The proposed increases include doubling the fee for expired metres and raising the penalty to $80. Aside from tickets, it also proposes marginal increases to daily and hourly parking rates.

iNFOnews.ca obtained details on unpaid parking tickets on city books last year, revealing almost $80,000 in outstanding fines. That total only applied to the past six months because the city’s only method to pursue them was through court.

“(Staff) usually go through and write them off as they expire and we don’t have the ability to enforce on them, meaning the evidence is dated and no court would allow us to proceed with those violations,” bylaw services manager Will Beatty told iNFOnews.ca last September.

He said it’s not often worth taking an unpaid $40 ticket to a judge.

Council will debate the proposed changes at a committee of the whole meeting next week.