Chapala’s municipal government is being shouldered with the responsibility of collecting a mountain of unpaid fines for parking violations in the downtown area pay-to-park zone.
Jalisco Administrative Tribunal (TaeJal) clerk Jorge González López appeared at City Hall on Wednesday, June 25 to deliver six boxes filled with approximately 55,000 parking tickets issued during 2012 and 2013.
After being shuffled back and forth between various government departments, the official finally managed to get staff at the treasurer’s office to sign for receipt of the documents.
In response to widespread negative public sentiment against the parking meters, Chapala Mayor Joaquin Huerta and his government have been locked in a battle with Comers-MK Ideas Tech, the private outfit contracted in 2011 to operate the system in the heart of the municipal seat. But the current administration has gained little ground in the various strategies it has employed designed to force the company to simply fold up its tent and walk away.
Fortified by prospects of collecting a 44-million-peso penalty for cancellation of the contract that was written into the 15-year-deal, Comers-MK has not budged. However, after discovering that clauses referring to parking fine tariffs were intentionally omitted from the municipality’s 2014 Ley de Ingresos (Income Law), last January executives instructed their inspectors to cease issuing tickets in order to avoid overstepping legal boundaries.
Since then the business has taken a financial hit as local residents became increasingly aware that they would not be penalized for failing to drop coins into the parking meters. Payment of the hourly parking fees has dropped by about 90 percent, according to the corporation’s CEO Francisco Espinoza de los Monteros.
He calculates that offenders have paid off barely 20 percent of the parking tickets turned over to the treasurer this week. That leaves approximately 10 million pesos still due for collection. Therefore, under terms of the contract, the city stands to pocket two million pesos, with an additional 1.5 million designated for social causes and tourism promotions. The rest would go to Comers-MK Ideas to cover salaries, operating costs and return on its investment.
Espinoza de los Monteros indicated that his business is holding out while various lawsuits it has instigated against the city slowly work their way through legal channels. While he doesn’t expect a final resolution to come through before the end of Huerta’s term, he suggests that the next administration could be stuck with steep payments for damages if courts rule in the company’s favor.
So far, the mayor has not been available for comment on the matter.