The one thing Detroit has always done efficiently is issue parking tickets. It's not unusual to get a ticket just minutes after the meter has expired.
But the city hasn't always been so good at keeping track of those who have paid their tickets. In many instances, the city has had the state put driver's license renewals on hold for people it thought had not paid their outstanding tickets, when in fact, they had.
Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press reports that the city is now going to fix that mess.
She writes:
If you pay your Detroit parking tickets late, you will no longer have to go to 36th District Court to pay an additional fee or lose the ability to renew your driver's license, under a plan crafted by Gary Brown, the city's chief operating officer.
Brown met Tuesday with officials from the court, the Secretary of State's Office and his own Municipal Parking employees after learning from the Detroit Free Press that his employees had sent more than 10,000 notifications to the court about people who owed fees. The court then sent those names to the Secretary of State, which promptly put a hold on those driver's licenses so they could not be renewed, even though some drivers had paid their tickets.
"We did get all the parties in the room together: the state, the court and the city and discuss all of our IT issues," he said. "A lot of the problem is all three entities have outdated computer systems that are having challenges talking to each other."