CITY of Newcastle's parking officers feel they are being pressured into writing more tickets and raising fines revenue, according to a member of the city's team of parking officers.
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The pressure has come by way of the suggestion from "management" that they use the amount of money raised by each parking officer as a performance measure.
"Management appear to be focused on revenue rather than compliance achieved or educating and providing a customer service," an anonymous parking officer told a number of Newcastle councillors in an email.
The same parking officer, who did not wish to be named, told the Newcastle Herald the suggestion was made at a meeting last week.
"We've never been questioned on ticket numbers or anything like that up until now," the staff member said.
In response, the council issued a statement from their Governance Director, David Clarke, who said writing tickets to ensure parking compliance was a part of the role that had to be done. "And when it isn't, management is entitled to ask questions and support individuals and teams when required," he said.
The expectation was that all parking officers work to achieve safe and compliant parking in the city, he said, as well as "the associated forecast annual revenue budget".
"While elements of a parking officer's job are educational and don't generate revenue, the need to walk the street and write tickets for illegally parked cars is a core part of our responsibilities," Mr Clarke said.The council would "continue to discuss" the fairest way to measure performance, and non-performance with parking officers and the union, but there had been no increased focus on growing revenue.
The council has raised more than $3.5 million in parking fines revenue this financial year, as at May 30, compared to a total of $3.7 million in 2019/20, and $3.9 million in 2018/19.
The parking officer said the new direction was coming from the top. City of Newcaslte CEO Jeremy Bath has previously pushed back at the State Government's suggestion that parking fines be lowered.
The parking officer said that in his view, using parking fines revenue as a performance measure was flawed in any case, given that tickets vary enormously.
"A few us raised that it shouldn't be revenue raised because it's more expensive in some places - an intersection, for example, might be $349 where a normal ticket might be $116, so you are encouraging people to go out for the bigger tickets rather than enforcing and getting vehicle turnover in the city and assisting businesses."
"On the one hand they are telling us that if we are not producing bigger numbers on the beat to call our supervisor - and he will move the beat so that in effect you are taking away our presence and our visibility in favour of revenue.
"There's a lot of permit areas, residential permit areas, where you have still got to have a presence and enforce on that and that's not necessarily producing revenue per se."
Councillor John Church applauded the parking officer's bravery in speaking out about the team's concerns and said they should be taken seriously.
"It is deeply troubling to hear that council is pushing for revenue targets from parking officers," he said.
"Their job should be focused on compliance and education. Newcastle has lost hundreds of parking spaces in this council term. We need to be encouraging people into our city, not chasing them away."
A number of councillors who also received the email said they passed it onto Mr Bath for investigation.
Councillor Kath Elliott, who received the email, said she was concerned about the apparent "grab" culture that its contents suggested.
"It's hard enough to encourage people to 'shop local' in our small businesses, let alone when we reduce their parking and then have a laser-like focus on fining people," she said.
The amount of revenue raised in Newcastle plummeted in the face of COVID restrictions last year. The council, which usually issues three quarters of the region's parking infringement notices, handed out only 53 parking fines in April 2020, down 97.6 per cent from 2210 a year earlier.
But the latest figures held by the Office of State Revenue show that number had climbed back up to 2320 in April this year, raising nearly $341,000, an increase of more than 60 per cent when compared to April 2014/15.
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