What drivers should know as Knoxville hires agency to collect past-due parking fees

Knoxville is cracking down on enforcing payments for traffic violations. And yes, that includes parking tickets.

The Knoxville City Council voted June 9 to let the city court hire an agency to collect past-due payments for traffic violations. Workers will call and send letters to those who owe money. The goal is to boost the court’s credibility and fairness, Municipal Judge Tyler Caviness said.

“As a policy matter, the citizen who has received a couple of parking tickets here or there, we’re not going to be expending effort or energy to collect on those tickets,” Caviness told councilmembers. “The folks that will receive some passing over this are the ones who break the same rules that apply to everyone else. That’s the idea behind how that enforcement would take place.”

The collections agency won’t report the past-due amounts to credit bureaus or initiate civil lawsuits, Caviness said.

The municipal court handles traffic citations; parking tickets; non-DUI alcohol violations; and violations of animal control codes, building and zoning codes, business regulations and environmental ordinances. Without a collections firm, it doesn’t have a way to pressure those who violate the rules to pay the fines levied against them.

The company Perdue Brandon will charge a 20% fee for each ticket sent its way. That means if someone is fined $100, $20 will be added to the total the violators owes ‒ the city court will get $100 and Perdue Brandon will get $20.

Knoxville continues to reckon with how to pay for its parking system. A study the city commissioned found the downtown parking system doesn’t make enough money to sustain itself. Later in 2024, Knoxville raised parking ticket fees and increased rates in garages.

Caviness told Knox News it is time to stop letting the fees go unpaid: “It is unlikely the parking ticket deficit would have been happened in the first place had some kind of collections process been in place before this.”

Under the city’s deal with the collections agency, collectors will:

• Make two written or phone contacts to each person with a ticket within 45 days of the ticket being issued
• Keep records of correspondences and make them available to the city
• Retain records for a minimum of seven years after tickets are paid
• Negotiate payment plans with customers and alert the city of payment plans
• Allow the city to monitor collections and provide customer service

Though collectors won’t take debtors to court or damage their credit, those who opposed hiring the agency say it sends a negative message to neighbors. Councilmember Amelia Parker, who represents the whole city, said she understood the city didn’t intend to hurt debtors’ credit but voted against the contract because she said that intention wasn’t clear in the contract.

“For me, I would rather see an updated contract that we could discuss,” Parker said.

Councilmember Denzel Grant agreed. He represents downtown, which by its nature has the bulk of the paid parking spaces.

“I can’t support this how it is,” Grant said. “At some point, parking is going to be a financial barrier for people to visit downtown. You’re talking about adding 20% to pay their cost, I don’t want them taking advantage of people downtown.”

Allie Feinberg is the politics reporter for Knox News. Email: allie.feinberg@knoxnews.com; Reddit: u/KnoxNewsAllie