MEDFORD, Ore.– The City of Medford’s parking enforcement now has a new system meaning all cars with unpaid parking citations from the last several years must now pay up.
The city estimates there’s several thousand outstanding unpaid parking citations and drivers are now being notified after an update was made to the city’s collections module.
“The previous collection module did not work right,” said Linda Fait, operations manager for Diamond Parking. “So recently we signed up with Southern Oregon Credit and their system has pulled all these old outstanding tickets.”
Contracted by the city, Diamond Parking patrols downtown Medford’s streets. With the recent update, drivers across the valley have been receiving notifications of unpaid citations as far back as 2012.
“[The module] communicates with Southern Oregon Credit and anything that’s 45 days or older, it will have pulled those notices and send the person a letter,” said Fait.
With calls flooding in, Diamond Parking officials say there a few things people should know.
Currently, the process for unpaid parking citations starts with a $25 citation as the first notice. That price doubles after 31 days if the citation isn’t paid or the collections office isn’t notified of a payment plan.
After 45 days the citation is sent to collections where the info is uploaded from the Diamond program and sent to Southern Oregon Credit Services. From there, the company will send a letter to the owner of the vehicle. If the citation happens to go above $150, the vehicle may be immobilized until and towed until it’s paid.
A few other important bits about the new notices is that first, unpaid citations prior to 2016 can be settled at half the amount.
Second, nothing is reported to your credit report and third, these collection notices were “first-time notifications,”not an additional citation.
If you didn’t own the vehicle at the time of the citation Fait says you can, “just send in a copy of the “Bill of Sale” or a copy of their purchase order when they purchased the vehicle and that takes care of canceling it out of their name.”
But the easiest way to avoid all of this according to Fait is to pay the fine before it’s too late.
“However, if they do just ignore it, yes they do have that possibility that their vehicle might get a wheel immobilized or placed on it.”
According to Diamond Parking officials, the city parking commission wants to receive more public input.
It holds a meeting on the second Thursday of each month. The next will be this Thursday, April 12 at 8 a.m.
The meeting is held in room 330 at Medford City Hall.
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