> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Feeding the meters fills City Hall’s coffers - URL: https://www.smdp.com/feeding-the-meters-fills-city-halls-coffers/ - Published: 2004-03-31T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T04:06:06.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import *Small number of Santa Monicans contest tickets* *By JAMIE WETHERBE Special to the Daily Press* (This is the second article in a series examining the parking ticket process in Santa Monica). By Jamie Wetherbe Special to the Daily Press CITY HALL — In Santa Monica, parking is a multi-million dollar business. While City Hall is poised this year to collect more than $10 million in parking tickets alone, Santa Monica takes in about $20 million in parking revenue — including $12 million in parking citations, which amounts to almost 6 percent of the city’s roughly $350 million budget. The rest of the revenue comes from parking fees and meters. “It’s a big deal,” said Lucy Dyke, City Hall’s manager of transportation planning. City Hall hired a Dallas, Texas-based company with a Los Angeles branch about a year ago to keep track of parking fines and enforce delinquent fees, officials said. Calling the 800-phone number on the back of a parking ticket issued in Santa Monica, a customer service representative from ACS State and Local Solutions will handle the matter — not a Santa Monica official. City Hall officials estimate that the company’s services this year will likely cost Santa Monica more than half a million dollars, an amount which is based on the percentage of parking fines collected. Part of the contractor’s estimated $550,000 payment includes a cut of the revenue collected in parking tickets and a percentage of delinquent fees collected on overdue parking tickets. When a parking ticket is paid, the money first stops at ACS in Los Angeles before it reaches Santa Monica, city officials said. ACS receives per ticket about $1 or more depending on how many thousands of parking citations it collects, said City Hall spokeswoman Judy Rambeau. Tickets typically range between $35 and $50, depending on the violation. The contracted company also has the responsibility of notifying in-and out-of-state residents of their parking fines before any late fees are added. > “(An administrative hearing is) supposed to make it easy to contest a ticket that’s just plain wrong. We only want people to have to pay for tickets that are good tickets.” — — LUCY DYKE City Hall’s manager of transportation planning ACS is required by law to notify people, regardless of their home address, of parking tickets within 30 days, and company officials said they contact the DMV in the state where the license plate is from. “That’s the main thing we pay them for,” Rambeau said. If parking citations continue to go unpaid after 30 days, ACS can send a collection agency after the delinquent ticket-holders, possibly affecting an individual’s credit report and his or her wages can be garnished until the ticket is paid, according to ACS officials. 7E2,ACS receives 25 percent of the money generated by the delinquent fees for tickets from those with California plates and 33 percent of the delinquent fees for those with out-of-state plates, according to city officials. So far, the city has been billed through February $85,355 for out-of-state collection and $120,865 for other delinquent collections, Rambeau said. ACS also plays a part in managing contested parking citations, according to city officials. The company typically handles contested tickets mailed or called in, and then passes them onto the Santa Monica Police Department for an initial review, city officials said. But under unusual circumstances, City Hall might intervene. After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the city dismissed several parking tickets in certain areas of the city, Rambeau said. City Hall didn’t want to add any more stress to the situation, she added. To contest the police department’s initial review, ACS will set up another review but not with a Santa Monica official, Rambeau said. It’s “somebody ACS uses, an independent third party,” she said. An administrative hearing is held, designed to keep contesters from having to go to court, Dyke said. “It’s supposed to make it easy to contest a ticket that’s just plain wrong,” she added. “We only want people to have to pay for tickets that are good tickets.” The next line in parking citation contesting is the Santa Monica Municipal court. In order to get any of these reviews, the ticket must be contested within certain time periods. In Santa Monica, 4 percent of parking tickets have been contested from 1994 through 2003, city officials said. The City Council decided last year after a decade of status quo to increase the cost of parking tickets. City Hall last June approved about a $10 increase to most parking violations, raising most ticket costs to $35 and $47, a move that has upped city revenue an additional $2.2 million, according to city officials. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 31, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/033104.pdf?ref=smdp.com)