Des Moines: Please pay your old parking tickets

Maybe you just didn't have time to deal with it. Maybe you lost the physical copy and forgot about it. Maybe you simply refused to accept it. 

Whatever the reason, if you've received a parking ticket in Des Moines over the past few years and have yet to pay it, the city would appreciate you remedying the situation.

The city wants to collect $1.49 million in parking tickets that have gone unpaid for more than 120 days, City Clerk Diane Rauh said Monday. The unpaid fines had reached enough of a critical mass that city staff mailed out 43,437 postcard reminders Wednesday. 

On Thursday and Friday, phones at City Hall were "ringing off the hook" with people wanting to pay, Rauh said. Since Friday morning, people have made around 500 payments through the city's website. Plus, she said, two large boxes of mail, likely with money enclosed, arrived at the city Monday. 

“People have one that’s really old and they forgot about it,” Rauh said. "...That’s why we do this.”

In total, the city is waiting on $1.8 million in unpaid parking tickets. While it's a small drop in the bucket of the overall city budget ($738 million), Des Moines Finance Director Bob Fagen said it's "still a great deal of money, absolutely." 

Should it all come back, the $1.49 million in delinquent fines would be injected into the city's general fund, which finances a variety of city expenditures, including police department salaries, road work and parks and recreation costs. 

Purely on a cost-comparison basis, the money could easily pay for three projects on Monday night's City Council agenda: the Columbus Park shelter renovation ($607,499), restroom construction at Sheridan and Tower parks ($443,084) and construction on the Fallen Officer Memorial ($101,529.15). 

While the extra money would be nice for the city, both Fagen and Rauh said people should pay just to follow the rules. Rauh said it was a matter of fairness to the people who do pay their fines promptly. 

Those who've let their payments lapse for more than 120 days have until Oct. 12 to pay up, the city said. Then their fines will be sent to a collections agency. 

Polk County will withhold license plate renewals for county residents who have unpaid Des Moines parking tickets on their record, Rauh said. The state could also withhold their income tax refunds until the parking tickets are paid. 

Rauh said the problem with those penalties is that some people escape their consequences — or are unaware of them — because they don't live here anymore. And some of the violators are businesses, so they're not subject to the repercussions aimed toward individuals.   

“We just wanted to give people one more chance,” she said. 

The last time Des Moines embarked on a mass-collection initiative was 2005, Rauh added. That was before people were able to pay online, so the post-postcard line at City Hall stretched down the stairs from the second floor. 

How to pay

If you are one of those people who needs to settle up, here's how: 

• Online at payparkingtickets.dmgov.org using a Visa or Mastercard credit or debit card
• In person at City Hall (400 Robert Ray Drive) on the first floor between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. using cash, check or Visa or Mastercard
• By mail, sending check made out to the city of Des Moines to the Des Moines City Clerk’s Office, P.O. Box 10326, Des Moines, IA 50306