ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT
Date: January 3, 1996
TO: Vancouver City Council
FROM: General Manager, Corporate Services
SUBJECT: By-law Fines - Use of An Outside Contractor for Telephone
Follow-up on Outstanding Fines
RECOMMENDATION
That the City proceed to tender for a contract to implement a
telephone follow-up process for outstanding fines, with funding to
be provided from increased fine revenues. The results of the
tender process will be reported back to Council for approval.
COUNCIL POLICY
On June 6, 1995, Council approved the following recommendation contained
in a May 26, 1995 Administrative Report:
"That the use of an outside contractor for telephone follow-up on
outstanding by-law fines be approved as detailed in this report, with
details of procedures, funding requirements, and tendering for a
contract be reported back for approval by Council."
PURPOSE
This report requests approval to tender for a contract to implement a
telephone follow-up process for outstanding fines.
DISCUSSION
On June 6, 1995, Council approved the use of an outside contractor for
telephone follow-up on outstanding by-law fines as a supplement to
existing collection procedures with details of procedures and funding
requirements to be reported back.
When a by-law violation notice is issued, the alleged offender has 34
days to pay the initial prescribed voluntary payment amount or may
dispute or transfer the offence to the Traffic Court. After 10 days
have elapsed from the date of offence with no action from the alleged
offender, a Final Notice is generated and sent to the
registered owner to advise that if the voluntary payment amount is not
paid or the offence is not dealt with by a certain date, then a summons
will be issued. Under the plan which Council recently approved, between
day 25 and day 30 after the date of the offence, a reminder telephone
call will be made to follow-up and establish
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a personal and direct contact with the alleged offender to determine if
he/she has questions regarding the outstanding amount or the process to
appeal or dispute the ticket in the Court system. This telephone call
will also inform the alleged offender about options on how payment might
be made and on subsequent follow-up procedures which the City will
pursue, including issuance of a summons.
The proposal is to employ an outside contractor to establish this phone
contact with the alleged offenders. It is estimated that approximately
4,000 calls per week would be required.
To implement this pre-collection procedure, the contractor will need to
utilize advanced technology requiring a software package that allows
direct look-up screens for information and an electronic tracing system
which can cross-reference and locate new and old phone numbers in a
matter of seconds. This utilizes skilled and highly developed telephone
techniques supplemented by a number of customer-focused, professional
and tactful individuals who have to maintain the good will between the
City and its customers. It also requires a fully-automated on-line
reporting system for activity review and audit tool.
Staff explored this new procedure with different agencies in the
business of collecting, locating, consulting, telemarketing and other
credit accounts recovery. Their services include accounts receivable
management programs, fully automated on-line systems and reporting,
multi-lingual staff, state-of-the-art technology in every aspect of the
collection process from pre-collection to debt collection, full service
legal departments, bailiff divisions, return mail locates and pre-
collection tools, legal process services, investigations, skip-tracing,
training and seminars.
When Council approved this recommendation on June 6, 1995, Council also
advanced for consideration the proportion of hiring staff with
disabilities and doing this activity in-house.
The difficulties associated with City staff performing this activity
include:
- Operators and supervisors would be required for about 14 hours per
day, six days per week.
- A significant investment would be required in the development of a
high-tech computerized dialling system with direct look-up
capability and on-line multi-user system including software.
Given the important work which management staff are currently involved
with in re-engineering the Treasury Division, and given overall budget
constraints, it is not feasible for staff to undertake this activity in-
house, at least initially. We therefore propose to tender their
activity to outside contractors that specialize in this area. The
results of the tender process will be reported back to Council for
approval.
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