Dear Dr. Gridlock:
I have spent the last three weeks attempting to pay a parking ticket in Fairfax County.
When I contacted the county online and by telephone, I was told that there was no record of my citation.
But now that a late fee is applicable, the county has suddenly found my citation. That is an extremely suspect development.
In addition, during my phone calls to resolve the problem, I discovered that the "Citation Processing Center" in Alexandria is not a county facility, but an outside contractor.
Even more remarkable, when the "CPC agent" could not solve my problem, I was directed to a company called Easy Pay in Michigan. So the contractor was using another contractor! What value is the Citation Processing Center providing if it simply outsources to someone else?
What are the details of the contract between Fairfax County and the Citation Processing Center? What services do they actually provide, and what functions are in turn outsourced to Easy Pay or some other entity? The incompetence displayed by the parties involved with processing my Fairfax County parking ticket raised numerous red flags for me.
Mike O'Dell
Oakton
I'll address your questions, but first, I am at a loss to understand why you chose to use telephone and online systems to locate and pay your citation. Parking tickets usually involve a paper notice that lists the reason you were cited, the fine and an address to which you should mail the ticket and a check. The canceled check becomes your receipt. In Fairfax County, you have two weeks to pay, after which a penalty is imposed.
Fairfax County outsources its parking ticket operation to Citation Management Inc. of Milwaukee. That move saved the county three full-time positions, got the police out of the data entry business and back on the street, and eliminated backlogs, according to Kevin Greenlief, director of the county's Department of Tax Administration. The county issues 80,000 parking tickets each year.
Greenlief said he is not aware of any component of this system operating from Michigan.
The moral of this story, I think, is to pay parking tickets immediately and do it the old-fashioned way: by using the U.S. mail.
Traffic Light Timing
Dear Dr. Gridlock:
Whom can I contact at the Virginia Department of Transportation about traffic lights whose timing seems to be off?
