Taipei City Councilor Pan Huai-tsung (潘懷宗) of the New Party on Thursday said that the city’s failure to follow up on delinquent parking tickets before enforcement deadlines has cost the city NT$260 million (US$8.59 million).
Under government regulations, the Taipei Parking Management and Development Office has five years to hand delinquent tickets off to the Administrative Enforcement Agency for follow-up action, Pan said.
However, between Sept. 1, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2011, the office failed to submit all the unpaid tickets to the agency, the last of which expired at the end of last year, he said.
The office said it received too many tickets to process and did not have sufficient personnel.
“Given that the office pulls in more than NT$1 billion per year, we could look at preparing a budget estimate for hiring more people,” Pan said.
Pan said that in the past five years, the office had processed 1,032,239 unpaid tickets with a total value of NT$118.83 million.
Each of the 10 largest unpaid accounts — belonging to people with multiple unpaid tickets — are more than NT$360,000, Pan said, adding that the largest unpaid account is worth NT$4.36 million.
The account holder, surnamed Kuo (郭), has 20 vehicles registered in his name, Pan said.
“Frankly speaking, these people are just tying up parking spaces. Not only do they not pay the office, they prevent others from parking their cars,” he said.
In 2010, the office began sending Kuo’s tickets to the agency and obtaining creditor’s certificates, but discovered that Kuo had no assets it could confiscate for payment, Pan said.
He said the office considered confiscating Kuo’s cars, but found out that they were too old and held no value, adding that the office had therefore decided that towing the vehicles and selling them off at auction as it normally would have done would be ineffective.
The vehicles should still be towed away to free up the spaces for others to use, Pan said, adding that the office should also find other means to pursue the delinquent account.
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