After a City of Atlanta Municipal Court Judge warned that the the city’s parking enforcement contractor repeatedly mailed invalid collection letters to parkers whose tickets had been dismissed, officials from the court and company talked in circles about how to correct the source of the problem.
The company's and city's computer software wasn't integrated, according to emails reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Court officials and the company, SP Plus, which operates under the name ATL Plus in Atlanta, spoke as if the responsibility for the integration lay with the city’s court, as previously reported in an AJC story last week.
But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has since learned that under the terms of the agreement between the city and SP Plus, the responsibility for integrating the system lies with company.
The five-year contract, which was signed in March 2017, says that the company shall “provide a fully integrated and secure web-based data system that stores, retrieves and
updates all citation-related data. Must be fully accessible by the City of Atlanta.”
The contract also precludes the company from billing people for voided citations.
“All voided citations shall be excluded from billing by the Service Provider(s),” the contract says. “The Service Provider(s) billing software shall be capable of reflecting the accurate count of voided citations and billing records submitted to the City shall reflect this count.”
Yet 18 months ago, Judge Gary E. Jackson complained in an email that SP Plus continued to issue collection letters to people with voided tickets.
“I’m getting dozens of complaints every week,” Judge Gary Jackson wrote in a September 2018 email. “If ATL Plus starts towing cars on dismissed cases, there will be lawsuits. It will be known that ATL Plus continues collection efforts knowing that cases have been dismissed.
“I do not think it is in [the company’s] best interest to continue its improper practice of issuing threatening collection letters.”
The problem has yet to be solved.
A spokesman for Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and a representative of SP Plus did not immediately respond to question about whether the company had honored its agreement with the city.
The AJC has also reported that ATL Plus has earned a rare "F" rating with the regions Better Business Bureau.
ATL Plus parent company, SP Plus, has roughly 23,900 employees and provides parking management services for large cities throughout the nation, including Chicago, Denver and New Orleans.
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