Dressing down for dud parking officers Author: CLAY LUCAS, CITY REPORTER Date: 16/07/2006 Publication: The Sunday Age
MELBOURNE City Council's parking enforcement team, which hauled in $28.5 million in fines in the past year, will be restructured after being branded "dysfunctional, poorly administered and inefficient" by its own boss.
The restructure follows a scandal last month when the council refunded $32,000 in illegally issued fines at Docklands.
There have also been allegations that some of the city's 88 parking inspectors may have issued fake fines.
In a confidential internal report last week, the council's chief executive, David Pitchford, told staff how the council must reform its troubled parking department. Actions include:
?"Rigorous" monitoring of parking inspectors. Any caught breaking the rules will be immediately sacked.
? An urgent review of parking officers' electronic hand-held fining devices to reduce mistakes.
? New guidelines to stop councillors pressuring parking officers to drop fines for councillors' mates.
? A comparison of the number of fines handed out in Melbourne City Council areas with neighbouring councils, to discover if Melbourne parking officers are over-fining motorists.
A project management group has been set up, and Mr Pitchford cautions his staff that the group will be given "whatever it takes" in resources, time and energy to achieve results.
The internal report follows a state Ombudsman's investigation into the Docklands ticket affair, which Mr Pitchford labels "the most damning analysis ever of a City of Melbourne operation".
The Ombudsman, George Brouwer, revealed in April that Melbourne's parking officers had been bullied by management for more than a decade into using overzealous methods, with senior staff at the council threatening to sack parking officers who failed to issue a quota of 30 tickets a day. Those quotas have been dropped.
The city's much-maligned "grey ghosts" were told to become more "customer focused" in an attempt to soften their image. They will also receive training to provide better customer service, including how to give traffic directions to city motorists.
Lord Mayor John So refused to comment on the issue, but last week Mr So and four councillors met the Ombudsman.
Councillor Peter Clarke, who attended the meeting, said there had been a revenue-generating culture among parking officers which would be overturned.
The City of Melbourne each year issues more than one-quarter of Victoria's $100 million worth of parking fines. Over the period April 2005 to March 2006, Melbourne issued 412,000 fines, compared with the City of Port Phillip's 178,000.
At Stonnington Council - where parking inspectors have been privatised - 175,000 tickets were issued. And in Yarra 116,000 tickets were given.
After the Ombudsman's report was released, at least one City of Melbourne councillor said the city's parking officers should be sacked and enforcement tendered out.
But Mr Pitchford last week told The Sunday Age that privatising the parking force was not under consideration. "There are no plans to outsource parking compliance operations," he said.