More than $7M in unpaid parking violations in Austin, memo says

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A city of Austin memo revealed the city's next steps as it works to address a backlog of vehicles that have unpaid active civil parking violations that have resulted in "nearly $7.4 million in unpaid fines."

Over the past five years, the city said it did not collect on more than 160,000 unpaid parking tickets. Furthermore, Austin has only issued 36 boot notices since 2022, the memo said.

Additionally, the city said "66% of civil parking violations were paid and over $7.8 million has been collected from the City's General Fund."

As a way to address the backlog of unpaid tickets, the city said it will address the issue by doing the following, as stated in the memo:

• Hearing officers are actively reviewing and issuing appropriate boot orders.
• Municipal Court staff will continue referring cases to an external collection agency once they are delinquent for six months.

"TPW and Municipal Court staff will continue to work together on verifying the accuracy of
the booting lists using current state vehicle registration data to increase the likelihood of
catching repeat violators of parking codes," the memo said.

The memo said there are "12,500+ transactions at metered on-street parking spots per day, with each transaction averaging around 1.5 hours per parking session."

"This information helps to contextualize the likelihood of identifying any single vehicle in the field that is currently on the booting list," the memo said.

Transportation and Public Works Director Richard Mendoza and Municipal Court Clerk Mary Grubb said in the memo that as of April 30, the city had 112,424 vehicles with 249,589 unpaid active civil parking violations and active boot orders.

"Out of that total, there are 5,012 vehicles with 32,284 unpaid active civil parking violations and an active boot order," the memo said. "Early analysis of the booting order list showed almost 40% of the vehicles had changed to a new license plate or were no longer registered in Texas."

The reasoning behind that number from officials was that in late 2022 the vehicle software expired for TPW vehicles that checked for violations and also a technology update to Municipal Court systems.

The system integration issue was identified in late 2024 and a solution was put in place for January 2025, according to the memo. The booting lists will now be updated daily for citation writers and will be updated monthly to the single TPW vehicle in use today.

"TPW and Municipal Court staff will continue to work together on verifying the accuracy of the booting lists using current state vehicle registration data to increase the likelihood of catching repeat violators of parking codes," the memo said.