City officials from several departments announced Thursday the first Unpaid Ticket Resolution Day, where citizens will have the opportunity to resolve unpaid citation fines this Sunday.
Madison Police Department Chief Mike Koval originally announced the initiative on his blog Tuesday and expanded on it during a Thursday press conference. He said the initiative is a collaboration between the municipal court, the city attorney’s office and MPD itself to alleviate the fear that is associated with outstanding fines.
Officials at the event will work with citizens to pay off those outstanding citations. Municipal Judge Dan Koval said reduced payments, payment plans and community service are options to relieve the citations.
“I want to emphasize for the people that won’t be able to be there Sunday that under the law you always have a legal right to set up a payment plan or community service option,” Judge Koval said at the press conference.
The event is exclusively for citation forfeitures such as traffic and parking tickets or building and health code violations. Citizens will work with city prosecutors to establish payment or community service plans that credit $10 per hour toward a fine. Judge Koval will then approve the plans.
“I look at it on a case-by-case basis,” Judge Koval said. “It is asking them questions about where are you financially, what are your expenses, what kind of income do you have, what other expenses do you have. And then we try to be reasonable and look at what would be realistic.”
The plan will not outrightly pardon any of the citations.
“We still feel, at the end of the day, those tickets [still must] have some accountability,” Chief Koval said. “But I do think that the environment we want to create is one of, let’s work with you to make you feel where you’re in a place that you’re more palatable.”
According to Deputy Mayor for Administration and Finance Enis Ragland, the city does not have an estimation of what the financial impact will be of substituting fines for community service, reducing fines or dismissing them entirely. But Chief Koval noted some of these tickets may never be paid without the event.
“When we have all of these unpaid tickets, some of which may actually never see the light of day, I would rather get a dime on the dollar rather than zero on the dollar,” Chief Koval said at the press conference.
Unpaid Ticket Resolution Day will be hosted at 2206 S. Park St. from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday.
