It’s the time of year when municipalities sit down to take a good look at their books: Budget time.
For most, it means taking a painstaking look at every dollar spent and every cent in revenue.
It’s a time when councillors would love to have a few more bucks at their disposal – to say nothing of $13 million.
“It’s certainly a number we’d like to have in the bank. We could do a lot with that money,” Brantford Coun. Dan McCreary told CTV News.
Thirteen million, give or take, is the amount Brantford is owed in unpaid parking tickets and other municipal fines.
Some of the fines date back more than a decade.
In Guelph, a little more than $13 million in unpaid fines have gone uncollected. Some of them date back to 1950.
Waterloo Region’s uncollected municipal fine tally sits at nearly $40 million.
At Queen’s Park, Bill 34 – currently before the legislature – calls for license plates to be denied if applicants have outstanding fines in a broader range of categories.
McCreary says he’d like to see more action from the province.
“It’s just one more file in which the province … is not good to municipalities,” he said.
“Everything’s collectable, if there’s a way to do it.”
