Fines and Fees in Operating Budget (Bellevue Police Department)

Mr. Morisy,
Thank you for your request. We forwarded your request to be processed by the City Clerk’s Office on November 23rd as you request records that would not be housed solely within the Bellevue Police Department, rather the Budget office and Clerk’s Office. Your main contact regarding your request is the City Clerk’s Office.

Our Department does not conduct appeals for citations the Bellevue Police Department issues – this is a function of the court system or hearing examiner process. We do not have any responsive documents to this request for “any logs of appeals of fines that is kept by this agency, including, if the log has it, outcome of the appeal, payments made, and other fields that are present in such a log.” Your request is better addressed to the King County District Court – Bellevue Division that adjudicates citations. Our Department does review our false alarm program fines if an alarm user requests a review, but this is not an appeal. The official appeal process is through the Hearing Examiner’s Office. No appeals for this program have been held yet. The first Hearing Examiner hearing is scheduled for January 7, 2016.

Attached are our contracts with (1) Public Safety Corporation for False Alarms; (2) American Traffic Solutions for traffic photo enforcement; and (3) Diamond Parking for parking enforcement. No redactions or exemptions were made.

The City Clerk’s Office should be in contact with you for the information not housed within the Bellevue Police Department if they have not contacted you already.

Melissa Chin
Legal Advisor
Bellevue Police Department
450 110th Ave NE
Bellevue, WA 98009
mchin@bellevuewa.gov
Phone: (425) 452-7826

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Dear Michael,

This e-mail is to confirm that the City of Bellevue has received a Public Records Request from you for information pursuant to the Washington Public Disclosure Act, Ch. 42.56 RCW. We apologize for the delay in responding and are working to get you an update or a second installment to your request as soon as possible but it may take us until December 29, 2015 to fulfill the request. Your new Public Disclosure Request file number is 1186-2015, which will help us locate your information if you contact us for an update.

We are working with our IT and Finance Departments and City Attorney's Office to locate records responsive to your request. Specifically, you are asking for the following records:

1. A copy of any official calculations of revenue coming from court fees and fines between FY 11 and FY 15, or calendar year 2010 and calendar 2014 if your government operates on a calendar year budget cycle;

2. Accounts Receivable databases that cover fines and fees paid for government services by individuals, rather than businesses. This would include Revenue Journals that cover such payments, as well as other financial statements that cover income from fees and fines;

3. Any logs of appeals of fines that is kept by this agency, including, if the log has it, outcome of the appeal, payments made, and other fields that are present in such a log;

4. A copy of contracts with any vendors that help manage the assignment, collection, or management of fees and citation information. This would include contracts with vendors that provide parking ticket software, for example, as well as court fees; and

5. The record layout for any databases that are used to track the assignment, collection, or management of fees, fines and citations. This would just be a copy of the header columns in these databases, and not the information in the databases. The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the meantime, I'm sending you the first installment to your request. Our Police Department has provided records responsive (i.e., contracts with Public Safety Corporation for false alarms, American Traffic Solutions for photo enforcement, and Diamond Parking for parking enforcement) to request number four from the above list. I am following up with our IT Department to find out if we have contracts for software relating to tracking infractions. The records have been uploaded to our FTP site and you can access them through the link below. The records will be available for 29 days.

Please click the following link to download your files:
http://webftp.bellevuewa.gov:80/AHT/DownloadLogin.aspx?package=i28fF%2f1XUEtW4rn%2bvOxjCchQxR9UKCM7Rb3XksGWJ7z06IetXoPERYJX%2fiQXmciGFG8Nx8QB9lva1NvfBlIA0vmaa51HnEA4GAuEhbFts7A%3d

We will notify you when records responsive to your request are available. Please let me know if I have missed anything in your request or if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.

Lisa

Lisa D'Aquila
City Clerk's Office │Public Disclosure Analyst
E: LDaquila@bellevuewa.gov<mailto:LDaquila@bellevuewa.gov>
T: 425-452-6880
F: 425-452-7937

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Hi Michael,

I'm writing to provide a second installment on your request. Attached and below are records and responses from our Finance Department:

From our Finance Department:

1. A copy of any official calculations of revenue coming from court fees and fines between FY 11 and FY 15, or calendar year 2010 and calendar 2014 if your government operates on a calendar year budget cycle;

Attached you will find the contract reconciliation files provided from the King County District Court, who we contract with for our court services. These files show the revenue the court has received on behalf of all cities that contract with King County for their services. The corresponding tabs allocate King County District Court costs according to a pre-determined allocation method (approved via the contract with KC District Court), and will show the gross revenue received on behalf of the city, direct KC court costs, and any net revenue/balance due by each city for that calendar year. Contract reconciliation files are received in July/August of the following year, so we will not receive the contract reconciliation regarding this calculation for 2015 until July/August 2016. 2011 through 2014 are attached.

2. Accounts Receivable databases that cover fines and fees paid for government services by individuals, rather than businesses. This would include Revenue Journals that cover such payments, as well as other financial statements that cover income from fees and fines;

Payments received by individuals are received through the King County District Court, we do not have this information. It's possible that King County might have this information available.

3. Any logs of appeals of fines that is kept by this agency, including, if the log has it, outcome of the appeal, payments made, and other fields that are present in such a log;

Appeals are received through the King County District Court, we do not have this information. It's possible that King County might have this information available.

4. A copy of contracts with any vendors that help manage the assignment, collection, or management of fees and citation information. This would include contracts with vendors that provide parking ticket software, for example, as well as court fees; and

Copies of contracts were provided under the 1st Installment.

I will provide another update and/or installment on or about January 28, 2016.

In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding the information provided under this installment. Thank you.

Hi Michael,

I'm writing to provide a third installment of records. The attached information is a screen shot of the database that our City Attorney's Office uses in response to the 5th item in your request.

5. The record layout for any databases that are used to track the assignment, collection, or management of fees, fines and citations. This would just be a copy of the header columns in these databases, and not the information in the databases. The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

Please let me know if this information satisfies section 5 of the request.

Thank you, Lisa

Hi Michael,

I'm going back through my requests and noticed that I did not hear back from you on this request. If you would, please let me know if the information provided satisfies the request. If I don't hear back from you by May 11, 2016, I will assuming you have what you need and will close out the request without further notification.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you and have a great weekend!

Good morning,

Thank you for your email below. I’m following up with our City Attorney’s Office to find out whether we have a “home screen associated with the Public Defender Database, or a landing page with consolidated information.” I will circle back with you as soon as I hear from them.

Our internal team is unclear as to what “home screen” and “landing page” means. When you have a second, can you provide more details? Thank you.