Syracuse City Council Discussion on Parking Ticket Amnesty - October 27, 2025
Syracuse City Council Parking Ticket Amnesty Discussion - October 27, 2025
The Syracuse City Council met to discuss a proposed parking ticket amnesty program. City staff presented updated data on outstanding tickets, the structure of penalties, and lessons learned from the 2020 Amnesty. The discussion covered eligibility, payment options, outreach plans, and the timeline for the upcoming amnesty.
Discussion Items
- Overview of parking ticket fines and penalties: A city official (Vicky) explained that a standard parking ticket has a $25 initial fine plus a $15 New York State surcharge, totaling $40. Penalties accrue at day 21 (equal to the fine amount), day 31–75 ($30), and after day 75 ($40). The amnesty would waive these penalties, reducing the ticket to the original fine plus surcharge.
- Outstanding ticket data: As of the meeting, there are 140,000 unpaid parking tickets dating back to 1997. Of those, approximately 16,605 tickets are from 1997–2006 (worth about $780,000), and 124,000 are from 2007 to date (worth about $10.6 million). Total outstanding balance is roughly $11.4 million.
- Previous amnesty (2020): The 2020 amnesty cleared 34,000 tickets and collected just under $1 million. Challenges included high call volume, inability to search by name, and reliance on mailed notices costing $27,000.
- Proposed changes for 2025 amnesty: No mailed notices; instead, a self-service payment portal (Invoice Cloud) allows lookup by last name, ticket number, or plate. A dedicated phone line with Spanish interpretation and email support will be available. The city will also use social media and in-person kiosks at the payment center to promote the program.
- Payment plans: The city now offers payment plans under state law. Minimum $25/month once enrolled prevents boot eligibility. Amnesty can be applied to tickets in existing payment plans if the citizen visits the City Payment Center in person.
- Date of amnesty: Initially proposed for November 3–21 (18 days), council members expressed concern that the window was too short for residents who are paid monthly or weekly. After discussion, the council agreed to extend the amnesty to the entire month of November (November 1–30, 2025), with online payments accepted through November 30. City staff confirmed they could handle the longer period.
- Outstanding tickets from 1997–2006: Staff noted that collection agencies cannot legally collect debts over six years old, and many of those ticket holders may be deceased or unreachable. They indicated that legislation will be forthcoming to formally write off those tickets.
- Boot-eligible violators: Approximately 135,000 unpaid tickets make vehicles boot-eligible, representing most of the outstanding inventory.
- Other enforcement questions: Councilors asked about out-of-state vehicles (some states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Utah do not share DMV data) and about ticketing for unregistered or uninspected vehicles. Staff said those are separate violations tracked in the system.
Key Outcomes
- The council voted (by voice, all in favor) to approve the parking ticket amnesty program for the entire month of November 2025 (November 1–30).
- Outreach will rely on the city website, social media, in-person kiosks, and direct communication from staff when citizens visit for other business.
- The previous plan for mailed individual notices was abandoned to save costs and improve accessibility.
- Legislation to write off pre-2007 tickets is expected to be presented separately.
Meeting Transcript
Ticket. And that's made up of a twenty five dollar fine plus a fifteen dollar New York State surcharge. Um and then if you don't pay, that's when the penalties accrue. Right. So day twenty-one, the first penalty accrues. And the first penalty is the amount of the underlying fine. So I just would call your attention on the first one that says, you know, the first line there says not late. Penalties 40. We're not gonna penalize somebody for being paying on time. So that that was an error. The penalty should have said zero, and then the total they would pay is $40, which is as outlined above, $25 initial fine and $15 surcharge. For the 21 days, your um penalty is the amount of the ticket. Just the 25, yeah. So it's 25. Yeah, so I apologize when this was uh put together kind of late. Um so the 21-day penalty would be 25, and that's what the person would pay. Next slide, because it gives a better breakdown. So there we go. Yeah. Without examples, just the straight facts. So again, right, you get a parking ticket, you have 90 days to pay or contest, and those penalties accrue over the 90 days if you're not paying. Like Vicky said, that first penalty is equal to the amount of the initial fine, 25 dollars. Um, there are a few that are 60, and then the accessibility ones are 100. Okay. This if you continue not to pay between days 31 and 75, that's when the second penalty of $30 rolls on, and then after day 75, the third penalty of 40 rolls on. So amnesty is waiving those penalty amount and taking the ticket for the example of the overtime back to a 40 ticket, the initial fine plus the surcharge. And this is what um amnesty is always been, so nothing new, but just a recap. So everybody understands and tried to give you updated information, including the updated um, you've got the fine schedule that is attached to the traffic code um attached to your packet just because a lot of these um aren't entirely cohesive when if you look at MuniCode or something. So there's 140,000 outstanding right now. That goes back to 1997. So um we previously had a collection agency um working on collecting parking tickets. It was largely unsuccessful, frankly. Um and the parking or the uh collection agencies cannot legally collect on debts that are over six years old. So all these tickets that we had that we see that you know, when with the amnesty, we spent all this money doing this skip traces to see, you know, can we find a current address for these people, let them know. I mean, let's think about the fact that it's 30 years ago. A lot of these people are dead. I mean, you know, um, or they've moved to another, you know, some place. I mean, it's a long, long time. So um, given that we cannot legally collect on them, we had asked to waive tickets before 2007, but um we you know we didn't get approval for that. So we're trying again to see if we can what we can do to collect this money. So of the 140,000, do you have a sense of how many of those are 2007 to now? Like more recent. Um I I would have to run a report to be honest with you. I didn't get that information. Yeah. Vinny might have it. Your numbers? Yeah, sorry. I want to know 07. Okay, so eligible tickets from um to give you the full picture, 97 to 06 is about 16,000 tickets, and then 07 to date.
openpublica.com