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By RACHAEL
HODDER, urban affairs reporter
19mar01
MELBOURNE councils are paying
bonuses to ensure thousands of motorists are given parking fines each
week.
Documents obtained by the Herald Sun under the Freedom of
Information Act also show that inner-city councils set annual fine targets
for officers to meet.
The City of
Stonnington even gives bonuses or imposes penalties on its out-sourced
parking contractor depending in part on how many fines its staff issue.
Stonnington paid its
contractor a $233,632 bonus in the 1999-2000 financial year.
It also penalised the
contractor $41,406 in the same year.
Stonnington, Port
Phillip and Yarra councils set parking infringement notice targets or
bases each year.
The targets put undue
pressure on staff, according to a former inner-city council parking
officer.
"In the old days
the idea was to keep the traffic flowing, not to sustain the council's
budget shortfalls," he said.
The former officer,
who did not want to be named, said the situation was made worse as
officers no longer had discretionary powers. "Once a ticket is
written it can't be withdrawn by the officer," he said.
But the councils
involved deny the targets amount to pressure.
They say targets are
needed for budgeting purposes and that officers are not forced to meet a
daily quota.
The Herald Sun investigation
has found:
YARRA'S target for
the 2000/01 financial year is to issue 182,000 fines - averaging 3500 a
week.
STONNINGTON'S current
annual target is 174,200 fines and Port Phillip's 147,000.
AN ANNUAL bonus is
given to individual officers at Port Phillip ($2500) and Yarra ($1500) if
the council's parking department operates effectively.
MELBOURNE Council
says it does not set targets but is using the estimate of 425,000 fines
being issued this financial year to meet its budget.
A Stonnington traffic
management spokesman said the council paid bonuses or claimed penalties
depending on whether or not the contractor met monthly goals.
He said about 16
performance indicators were used to determine if the goals had been met.
The spokesman said
they included how many fines were issued, what sort of fines they were and
how many were valid.
Yarra's parking
services business leader Grant Kelly said all staff in the unit, not just
parking officers, were entitled to a bonus based on overall performance.
Port Phillip's Geoff
Oulton said the bonus was based on punctuality, staff presentation,
customer service, additional duties, cost control and efficiency, not the
number of tickets issued.
Re: article by Rachael Hodder - 19 March
2001
"BONUS PAID FOR PARKING FINES"
Having a surf on the internet, I stumbled on
this article.
I'm a parking and traffic officer for both
the City of Melbourne by day and the City of Yarra by night.
Yes we do get a bonus of $1500 dollars from
yarra, which is solely based on ticket numbers, but you will discover
that the night patrol officers (which I'm apart of) placed a clause in
our enterprise agreement (EB) and or local area workplace agreement (LAWA)
that the $1500 would be subject to the officer donating that sum to a
charity - the night crew (some) were totally against the idea of bonuses
as we believed that this was a form of 'secret commission' and placed
undue pressure on the officer - we had heard from day time officers that
if there was a break between tickets of 30min, they would be questioned
by management (excluding meal breaks).
In Melbourne on the other hand, officers are
placed in teams where a team target is set. If the team meets the ticket
target they have 1/2 a day off a month to go to the pub or have a bbq
and still get paid - mind you, if your 10 short on ticket numbers you
miss out. Peer group pressure voids the team leader of any harassment to
push less productive officers in the team.
The individual bonus is also annually, and
an officer can received a 3 or 5% bonus - during an officers review an
element of productivity is there - and it amazes me that officers who
get the 3 and 5% are also the big ticket number writers and the officers
that focus on the PR service and show empathy with the motorist get
"squat".
PS, There are even stories where the council
was informed by staff that parking signs we not enforceable, but told to
go ahead and keep booking. 100's were issued
Strictly Confidential,
Ludwig
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