Updated
In the three months since Independent Security Services Atlantic took over the city’s parking enforcement, they’ve issued over 4,000 more tickets than former contractor Securitas during the same period last year. With an increase of that scale, you would expect a few more complaints to be filed.
After becoming conscious of public grumblings regarding the city’s new parking enforcement contractor, The Coast decided to inquire officially.
Here’s where it gets weird.
City Hall says residents are more satisfied than ever with the service and professionalism shown by the new ISSA agents. According to their figures, fewer complaints were registered with the city last month than the year before. An intriguing statistic, since it would signify that residents are happier than before to be receiving significantly more parking tickets.
The police say they’ve heard complaints about tickets this summer, but that generally people aren’t happy to be receiving parking tickets anyway. All further inquiries were directed to the city, since parking enforcement administration is under municipal authority.
That’s been the case since 1993, when the majority of parking enforcement was outsourced by the city to a third party company. This has advantages—it allows police to worry about bigger social ills than somebody’s SUV parked in a loading zone, while also increasing revenue for the city.
But it also carries risk. The city loses control over agent training. Discipline of unruly agents is not in the city’s hands, but is left to the company’s discretion. And it leaves room for fixation on that most common of corporate goals: to write as many tickets as possible in order to show increased performance numbers.
After multiple attempts to contact Independent Security Service Atlantic for information about their agent training and approach to parking enforcement, no answers were provided. City Hall’s public relations had little to say on the subject either.
City spokesperson Sarah Reeves wrote in an email, “All parking enforcement officers receive five days of training from a training officer, including on-street training where they write up mock tickets alongside an officer who is qualified to issue legitimate tickets.”
To clarify, only ISSA officials receive their training from the city officials. Those officials then train the agents hired by ISSA. Part of that training includes conflict resolution (i.e. how to give tickets without getting punched in the eye).
“They have no instruction outside of what is outlined in provincial legislation or municipal by-law/regulation,” says Reeves.
That means, in theory, that ISSA are not under orders by City Hall to increase the number of tickets distributed. Any increase could therefor be attributed to the company’s own motivation.
No information was provided by HRM or ISSA about how agents were screened, selected, or disciplined if complaints are filed against them.
Further questions about how ISSA was able to undercut competing companies for the contract—by hundreds of thousands of dollars—also went unanswered.
The original version of this article stated police haven’t “typically” written parking tickets since 1993, when it was outsourced by the city. Halifax Regional Police officers can, and do, issue tickets on a case-by-case basis. Training for ISSA management was also provided by city staff, not the police, as was first written. The online copy has been changed to reflect this. A quote by Halifax spokesperson Sarah Reeves has also been moved down a paragraph, for clarity’s sake. —ed.
This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2014.
Trying to create controversy from a more efficient parking enforcement company?
Lame.
This ‘news piece’ is about 7 or so paragraphs too long. No wonder TimB flew solo if this article is indicative of the new direction of The Coast. Ariane, the editors did you a real disservice by letting this go to print, now your name will forever be associated with this, um, ‘journalism’.
Just a quick point. I’m not a fan of tickets, or the city telling me what I can or cannot do. I do get that if there weren’t rules, it would be chaotic and there needs to be a penalty to keep people from breaking the rules. The simple solution- Park where you are legally allowed to or accept that your parking will cost you $25. It is frustrating that the fine makes it essentially ok to park anywhere if you are well off financially and make-or-break for someone who is on the lower end of the income scale, but that’s a whole other problem.
If nobody broke the rules, there couldn’t be extra tickets. Supposedly the city hired a company to penalize people who do not obey the rules, and I hope that’s all that is happening.
Sounds like they’re doing a good job and you’re trying to discredit them by saying their training system is somehow lacking. So I guess that means they’re not doing a good job. But with all the positive feedback I’d say five days is sufficient training time.
Then you end your article by pretending they’re keeping scandalous secrets about how they undercut the competition. Theres no magic going on here, just a credible honest company getting a contract for a change. Seriously Coast, a year ago you would have been on their side and this article would have focused on the shortcomings of the previous company. The only question this article leaves me with is what really was happening with Securitas?
Yeah, no shit Nukka. For once The City hired a local company that put in a legitimate bid which beat the larger non-local company. Why doesn’t The Coast do a story on how ISSA grew from a small operation filling a gap in the security business locally to where it is now: outbiding a company employing over 7,000 people in Canada and 310,000 people globally.
Oh right, boring, let’s bitch about parking tickets.
They’re doing a fantastic job and nice to see them ticketing ILLEGAL parkers!
If so many parking tickets are being handed out, why is no one asking about parking related issues ? I’ve been living here since 2010 and have my share of tickets. All of them received when buying merchandise in YOUR downtown core. Shoes, lunches, clothes. That all stopped six months ago. The downtown core is unfriendly to people who have the means to pay for YOUR items. Don’t fret, I’ve kept every receipts from my new favorite place to shop, Moncton NB. The city should have a copy by now showing the loss of revenue. Free parking at all the stores, better selection and overall better customer experience. I’ll just quietly wait until more businesses close their doors downtown. Maybe they will put up parking lot.
I agree with some of the other comments, this sounds like a non-story. Although downtown Halifax, for example, is not comparable to the downtown core of a major US or US or Asian city, it does get quite congested at times, people start parking in ways that turn a 2 way street into a one-way street, or they constrict what is intended to be a main road (Hollis for example is in theory a 2 lane street but for long stretches is effectively one lane).
So I have no problems with a parking enforcement company doing a job well. There have been numerous occasions where I haven’t had a proper sightline to a corner because of where a person has parked, and nobody wants to hit a pedestrian.
Me personally, because I actually dislike parking in downtown Halifax, I usually park in Dartmouth and take the ferry, or I park out past Summer Street. Because I have two feet and a heartbeat, and I can actually walk.
I used to work as a ‘meter-maid’ parking enforcement officer, years ago, in Halifax. There are so many parking issues in Halifax, I’m surprised that people can FIND parking sometimes.
Like SMU – You park on the road (1 hr parking) on any road surrounding the campus (Robie/Inglis/Tower/Roxton/etc) and get a ticket daily because your classes are an hour (meaning you’re parked for longer than an hour) or 2 hours (which means you’re even longer.)