The days of hand-written parking citations are coming to an end in Wheeling.
Wheeling City Council on Tuesday approved a contract with Tyler Technologies to purchase a parking court system for $46,508 from the Finance Department budget. Finance Director Michael Klug said the contract is in the mail and within the next week or two, parking meter enforcement officers will have three devices to replace their notepads.
The items designed for the two city meter readers and one fine collector will be Motorola Symbol MC75 devices that appear much like Blackberry cell phones. Klug said they will be connected to a belt-clipped printer that will create a ticket similar in shape to a grocery receipt.
At the end of each day, Klug said the officers will bring the devices back to the City-County Building and place them on a dock. Data will be automatically extracted and logged into the provided software. When a ticket goes unpaid beyond its due date, the software will notify city officials so proper action can be taken to collect the fines.
Though Klug could not say for sure yet whether the devices will increase city revenue significantly, he said fine management will become less cumbersome and that officers will perform more efficiently.
Patty Miller, meter officer, agrees with the new system's purpose.
"It's going to be easier, quicker, more efficient, a lot more advantages," she said, noting that in the winter months, her ink freezes up and causes difficulty in writing tickets.
Previously, the Wheeling Police Department obtained a license plate reader that attaches to the rear side of a cruiser. It captures plate images and automatically runs checks on all vehicles passing in front of the view finder. An included ability in those checks is finding drivers with outstanding parking tickets.
Police Chief Robert Matheny said information from the parking court system can be entered into the plate reader's database by hand, but he did not know if the software for the two systems will be able to interact automatically. He said he will explore the idea to see if synchronization is possible.
Matheny said the plate reader arrived Tuesday and will become operational in coming weeks. A Homeland Security grant for $21,375 was accepted by Wheeling City Council in November to obtain the reader.