Credit: Kevin Leeson
A third of all parking tickets issued over the last three years by the city of Cleveland remain unpaid, an investigation by News 5 Cleveland has revealed.
  That means millions of owed dollars that should have gone directly to the city’s general fund (which helps pay for parks, streets and police and fire stations) have yet to be collected.   
As the city no longer employs a third-party collection agency, something that many other major cities use, it’s far easier for people who have one or two parking tickets to simply ignore increased fines and not pay.

When a driver has racked up more than three tickets, that’s when the city seems to have some leverage by not allowing a person to renew their vehicle registration with the state until the fine is paid. 
Five parking infractions or more also means there’s a chance your car will be towed when spotted downtown.

Since 2000, News 5 found that the city has $45.6 million worth of uncollected fines. If you so choose, you can go ahead and pay your parking tickets on the city’s website.

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14 replies on “Apparently You Don’t Have to Pay Your Parking Tickets in Cleveland”

  1. I bet What A Dump! is the type of entitled prick who would love to take advantage of this situation and park like an ass around town just to screw over the city.

    Seriously, fuck What A Dump!

  2. yeah, that guy is famous now. where can I find his podcast seriously. the guy from the comments on clevescene dot com articles.

  3. Cheers to the city for getting rid of a third-party collection agency to harass its citizens over $25 a pop. As the article points out, if you’re a parking menace who doesn’t pay tickets, you’re not going to get your registration renewed or will find your car being towed.

  4. Maybe if the city wasn’t so money hungry and extorting you to pay to park your car everywhere, people wouldn’t say “Fuck that ticket!!”

  5. 30 of that million is stolen from people just trying to get by in life having to deal with aggressive ticketers notoriously checking every street every ten minutes knowing we live in the digital age where people don’t really use cash anymore and forget all the time to get quarters and/or our appointment went past what the abismal time limit sign says. Cleveland parking absolutely sucks. It’s a cash grab. Just like city taxes. Greedy bastards.

  6. Downtown Is The Worst Tho Them Ticket Cops Be Trying To Give U A Ticket Soon As U Hop Out Your Vehicle. When Going Downtown I Always Park In The Middle With My Hazards On Like The Delivery Trucks. You Can Do The Same To Avoid Them Ticket Park.

  7. Those meter maids treat parking downtown like its New York or Chicago. Cleveland should be encouraging people to come downtown and spend money, especially on weekends. Instead they wait for the very second for the meter to run out to ticket you. Its a racket, I work and live downtown and I see it everyday. They should at least install the digital meters that except card or a ubiquitous app people can download to pay meters.

  8. If we can bend over backwards to hand over blank checks for more than a billion dollars at a time to Sherwin Williams, etc.–pay to build their buildings, pay their property and payroll taxes for them for 15 years just so they’ll stay here–we can admit that parking tickets bleeding the working class aren’t the end of the world. Taxes and fees are raised on everyone else (to the point that some residents are losing houses that have been in their family for generations), and still the schools are left to crumble, still the roads aren’t taken care of, still Cleveland has the absolute worst child poverty of any major U.S. city and the homeless are not only left without a cold weather plan but churches trying to help out are threatened by the city instead of offered assistance by the city. If this horrible mismanagement is what the City’s doing with the money it already has, handing over more money to pay these contrived charges could not be a more obvious mistake.

  9. I’m not sure how true this is and yes they did stop me from renewing my license and they got parking tickets from back in 2005 until now they’re stating that I owe $945 and put me on a payment plan and I have to pay $145 down to get the block lifted off of my record it makes no sense that they waited until 2019 to start putting restrictions on people’s license to renew

  10. @IMPERFECTUNION street parking downtown is generally free on the weekends and after 5pm on weekdays(if you can find a spot). Or be smart and get truck plates and park anywhere you want except handicapped and fire zones.

  11. Abm takes advantage of inferior equipment, non descriptive signs, multiple signs that contradict each other and even ticketing people that actually did pay. Then their appeals process isn’t necessarily fair considering it doesn’t happen in person but through email. And if you just went off on this, remember Amazon doesn’t pay taxes you dolts.

  12. Sure,if you don”t want to pa the tickets, that’s your call, but remember there is no statue of limitations so he tickets do not go away, hence the 45M uncollected. Violators move, die or just plain ignore them. 70% of the violators owe more than $500.00. The fist thing people say is I didn’t get a notice the we find out they haven’t lived at a certain address if 4 years DUH!! Mos of you posting comments are probably the biggest violators only speaking out because of a news report, I get it. Your tax dollars paying people to find these violators and enforce the law but you choose to bash these same people because you refuse to pay. What a concept.

  13. Cleveland should not be relying on parking ticket revenue to finance their basic value adds. Make Sherwin pay their taxes. Make downtown more accessible. Decommission Burke Airport and develop the lake. Be a functioning city before everyone leaves again.

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