Quantico out $20 K in parking tickets

By Aileen Streng

Published: August 26, 2008

A total of 838 parking tickets, worth $20,450, written by the town of Quantico’s police officers since 2005 remain uncollected or unaccounted for, according to an audit of the police summons.

The Quantico Town Council recently received the audit review conducted by its internal auditor, Donna A. Culbertson, a certified public accountant.

Culbertson compared the information from the paper ticket books from 2005 through April 30 with the police department’s computer bookkeeping records and the municipal office’s computer records.

She found numerous irregularities.

“The Police Department’s QuickBooks file [accounting software] provided to the Municipal Office as of April 30, 2008, is not accurate based on actual tickets written,” Culbertson wrote in the review.

In some cases, the ticket information was never recorded into the computers or was recorded incorrectly or incompletely. In other cases, tickets paid were not properly documented or applied to the ticket.

Additionally, 121 tickets were voided and not properly recorded. Many of the voided tickets remained in the computer file listed as outstanding fees owed.

Quantico Police Chief Gerald Tolson has held his position for four years on a part-time basis. He oversees two full-time and three part-time police officers.

Tolson could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Quantico Mayor Iris Tharp said she continues to support him.

“The chief feels really bad about the situation and has been very involved with all of this. He is working with us to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Tharp said.

Tharp and Quantico Treasurer Debra Kidwell said this week that steps have already been taken to address the problems highlighted in the review.

“It’s all going to be resolved. We have a new system,” Tharp said.

“We are working to get a good system in place,” Kidwell said. “We’re going to be more aggressive in collecting.”

Still, there are those in the town who want more done. After the audit review was presented during a public town meeting earlier this month, a town resident turned it over to the Virginia State Police asking for an investigation.

“An investigation has not been initiated at this time,” said Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the state police, on Tuesday. “The information provided by the concerned citizen was turned over to the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Fairfax Field Office for review and evaluation.”

However, the supervisor responsible for conducting that review and deciding if it will be investigated is currently out of the office and on vacation. No decision will be made until the supervisor returns, she said.

Tharp, who took office in July, said that she asked for the audit review when the town police department lost its administrative assistant in early summer. The assistant was responsible for following up on the ticket paper work and logging the information into the police department’s computer system.

Tharp said she wanted know the current status of outstanding parking tickets before the responsibility for following up on them was moved over to the town’s municipal office.

“I wasn’t at all surprised at the results [of the review],” Tharp said, adding that previous administrations had made the decision not to aggressively pursue outstanding tickets, including going through the court system, because of the cost involved.

“It would cost us $30 to go after a $5 ticket in court,” she said.

Parking ticket fees have since been raised to $25 with an additional $25 late fee if not paid within five days. “We think that they are going to pay their tickets quickly because they don’t want to end up paying $50,” Tharp said.

There are other factors that have made it difficult to collect the tickets. The transient nature of the town where many residents are short-term renters is one reason. Another is that a large number of visitors to the town are associated with the surrounding Quantico Marine Corps base and may be only temporarily assigned to the base, Tharp said.

Tracking down the these sort of vehicle owners who have been issued tickets has been time consuming and labor intense, a strain on the small town staff, Tharp and Kidwell said.

Yet Tharp and Kidwell acknowledge that mistakes were made, in part, because of the small size of the office staff and town resources.

“Maybe we weren’t as diligent as we should have been,” Tharp said.

Kidwell said that the police department’s administrative assistant did not always follow through with the paper work or would get behind in it.

However, the follow-up on the parking tickets has now been moved out of the police department and into the municipal office where a new administrative assistant has been hired to, in part, manage the enforcement of the summons.

“We’re working now with a new administrative person who is taking hold of the responsibility on a routine basis,” Kidwell said.

Town staff also is looking at ways it can pursue habitual offenders to address one of the findings of the audit review.

“It appears there are several individuals that have been sited multiple tickets and enforcement notices and continue not to pay because they realize there is no further follow-up or consequences,” according to the review.

“This is all going to take some time to put in place but we are working on it,” Kidwell said.

Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-78-8010.