THREE DECADES OF CHANGES, PART 2


They Didn’t Pay –We Got Their Driver’s Licenses


I


Delora Siebrecht retired last year after nearly 30 years of service to the city of Urbana, IL. She graciously offered to write about her experiences “growing up” in parking. This is the second of a two-part article. Editor BY DELORA SIEBRECHT


NPART 1OF “THREE Decades of Changes” (PT November 2010), I explained that my park- ing career began at the


Urbana, IL, Finance Department in 1981. At that time, the city’s parking office was using a main- frame computer database for parking tickets.Evenwith a com- puter to track issued and paid tickets, we were manually han- dling each ticket 10 times. Talk about time-intensive.


More hands-on work involved send-


ing notices for unpaid tickets. Notices were printed on continuous forms and mailed biweekly. The clerks split the forms and prepared the mailing by hand, a job that took two days to complete. In 1983, the department purchased an elec- tric burster that removed the side printer pull holes and split each form. A redesign of the print for-


mat eliminated the carbon fly sheet that had to be removed by hand and updated programming printed the notices in Zip Code order, allowing us to qualify for bulk mail rates. The length of time to prepare notices decreased to three to four hours, a huge time savings and a cost savings on postage. In 1983, Illinois passed a law allow-


Administering the suspension


process was smooth, accurate and extremely successful. Our collection rate increased to approximately 90% and has stayed at that percentage for 25 years. Urbana became the model city using the suspension process.The state continues to refer all newcomers to the city for guid- ance in setting up the suspension process.


offender said theywould have their attorney or state representative take care of the suspension. The legal process is such that the Parking Administrator – that would have beenme – is in control of releasing the suspension; no one else can. Ah, the satisfaction of collecting those fines – $$$! The use of personal computers


and word processing was the next advance that changed our office workload.Around 1984,we started using Word Perfect, Lotus for spread sheets and Reflex to man- age databases. These tools were a tremendous help in tracking ticket


collection and revenue analysis. I could easily produce reports that showed our successes and where we needed to focus our collection efforts. Micro-processors and the electronic


Ah, the satisfaction of collecting those fines – $$$!


The really great aspect of collection


ing cities to suspend the driver’s license of the registered owner of a vehicle with 10 ormore outstanding parking tickets. Urbana was one of the first cities to


adopt the state statute and suspend driver’s licenses for unpaid parking fines. Because the city used an in-house computer pro- grammer, we were able to design software that did all of the date tracking and produc- tion of the required notices and letters.


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by driver’s license suspension is no time limit on the suspension. I handled many suspensions that


were 15 years old. Usually in these cases, the person had been attending the univer- sity and moved out of state. They moved back to Illinois and applied for a driver’s license. Surprise, the suspension would still be on their license, and they would have to pay the city before they could get a valid license. Another sweet moment was when the


JANUARY 2011 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


issuance of tickets created major changes in managing parking tickets. The Univer- sity of Illinois, home of the super comput- er, produces an unending supply of gradu- ate students talented in computer science and eager to market their ideas at a low or no cost. The school’s Campus Park-


ing Division was working with a graduate student developing electronic hardware and software


for issuing parking tickets. In 1987, the city contracted the same grad student at a very reasonable cost, and we started issu- ing electronic tickets.After smoothing out a few wrinkles in the process, we were issuing 90,000 tickets a year. The electronic upload of issued tick-


ets greatly reduced the paper handling and data entry for department clerks. Then, in 2005, online ticket payments gradually reduced the hands-on processing of ticket payments by half. I was able to focus my staff on collections and improved cus- tomer service.


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