Hennepin County parking tickets will increase $10 across the board beginning Jan. 1.
The increase will pay for new technology that will allow parking enforcement officers to cover more ground.
“This is the first increase in ticket fines in years,” said Chris Volkers, administrative manager for the county’s criminal and traffic courts.
Volkers said the fine increase was instituted to put Hennepin County more in line with other large metropolitan centers in the United States.
“Go to Wisconsin or large cities and parking ticket fines will be around $20,” Volkers said.
The fine increase was introduced by city and county officials and passed by the state Legislature during the 1998 session.
Volkers said the majority of the money generated by the fine increase will be reinvested in the ticket tagging and administrative process.
No release date has been set to launch the new technology, but once in use, results could be devastating to chronic illegal parkers. Parking enforcement officers will be able to type in ticket information on the street that will then be transmitted through phone lines back to the violations bureau.
“Clerks in our office won’t have to guess at the handwriting on the tickets anymore,” Volkers said.
— John Adams