Parking ticket tally tops 70,000

Kevin Thompson
Kevin Thompson
Dunedin's parking wardens don't do quotas and don't receive iPods for their efforts - but new figures suggest they don't need them either.

Details released by the Dunedin City Council show the city's 12 scooter-riding wardens together wrote 70,273 tickets in 2009.

That works out at an average for each warden of 5856 tickets a year, or 112 a week.

Based on those calculations, the council's longest-serving warden - celebrating 20 years in the job later this year - could by then have issued 117,120 tickets over the course of a career.

That is almost one ticket for each man, woman and child living in Dunedin.

Details of the council's tally of tickets issued were released by council development services manager Kevin Thompson last week, following a request by the Otago Daily Times.

Last year's ticket total was nearly 5000 more than the 65,574 issued the previous year, itself a drop from the 68,664 issued in 2007, he said.

However, Mr Thompson insisted there was no room for quotas, incentives or any other type of target when it came to writing tickets in Dunedin.

"I have been here doing this [job] since 2002 - I have never heard about any targets or quotas, ever.

"It's a complete myth," he said.

His comments come after it was claimed last week parking wardens in Wellington - working for a private company contracted to the city council - were offered incentives including iPods and holidays, the Dominion Post reported.

Christchurch wardens were expected to write seven tickets an hour, and high-scoring wardens had their names etched on a cricket bat, The Press reported.

Mr Thompson said the performance of wardens in Dunedin was monitored, with the number of complaints received, the range of types of tickets issued and their overall number, as well as other parking duties performed, all considered.

Questions would be asked if a warden issued substantially fewer tickets in an area of the city than was normal, or issued substantially fewer of a certain type, such as for parking in loading zones in an area of the city that had many, he said.

However, that was "completely different" from a quota, he insisted.

The council's figures also showed the chances of escaping a ticket were not good - of the 70,273 tickets issued last year, 5516 explanations were received and 2856 accepted, resulting in those tickets being waived.

In part, Mr Thompson said the increase in tickets issued last year was because of a rise in the number of wardens employed by the council, up from nine in 2008 to 12.

 

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