At council this week the municipality’s chief bylaw officer, Bonnie Brokenshire offered statistics proving that Bowen Islanders don’t pay fines when they are ticketed. In a typical year, she said, just 30 percent of bylaw notices are paid. In the first six months of this year, said Brokenshire, Bowen Islanders have paid approximately 26 percent of bylaw-related fines, leaving the municipality short roughly $1,900.
Council approved Brokenshire’s request to use a collection agency to recover unpaid fines with the adoption of the Collection of Fines policy. This policy will require the municipality’s bylaw services to have to notify a person, in writing, that a penalty is due and payable. If that fine is not paid within 28 days, bylaw services can forward the penalty to a collection agency.
Brokenshire says that the collection agency used by most municipalities would deliver 67 percent of all monies collected back to the municipality.
She said that when she looked into how compliant people are with paying fines in other municipalities, she looked to North and West Vancouver. In both of these municipalities, people paid upwards of 40 percent of their fines.
“It seems to me that simply having a collection agency in place increases the level of compliance,” said Brokenshire.
