Purpose of Audit

The purpose of our audit was to examine the Court receivables for parking offenses for the period January 1, 2010, to May 31, 2012.

Background

The Town of Eastchester is located in Westchester County and has a population of approximately 32,000 residents. The Town is governed by an elected five-member Town Board including the Town Supervisor. From January 1, 2011, to May 31, 2012, Town employees issued over 23,600 parking tickets and the Town collected approximately $806,000 in fines for parking violations.

Key Findings

• The Court’s parking ticket collection rate exceeded 85 percent during fiscal years 2010 through 2012. Despite the high collection rate, the Court still had $1.89 million in cumulative unpaid parking tickets outstanding as of May 31, 2012. This included 10,599 unpaid parking tickets totaling $851,906 that have been outstanding for more than five years and 9,526 unpaid parking tickets totaling $1,039,460 outstanding for less than five years. Town officials stated that they are in the process of removing some of these parking tickets. However, as of August 28, 2012, they still remained on the unpaid parking ticket record.
• Town officials stated that parking ticket revenue is not included in the budget as a revenue source, nor are parking ticket receivables recorded, because of the uncertainty of collection.

Key Recommendations

• Adopt written policies and procedures for identifying uncollectible parking tickets and removing them from the records.
• Budget accordingly for anticipated parking ticket revenue and properly account for related revenues and receivables in the accounting records.