New amnesty program wipes away parking ticket late fees
COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — You may have walked back to your vehicle after parking downtown Columbia, only to find an orange envelope with a white ticket tucked under your windshield wiper.
The City of Columbia’s Parking Services has a new amnesty program running through July 31 to help forgive any late fees that have been accrued.
“We didn’t want to have citizens think that parking services, you know, ‘We’re just out to get people,’ we want to make sure that we give them the opportunity to get all of those late fees removed, where they can pay their citations and start with a clean slate,” says Tori Salvant, Deputy Director of Parking Services.
According to Salvant, to have those late fees removed, citizens will need to come in-person to the parking services office at 820 Washington Street between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, and provide them with either your ticket numbers or license plate numbers if multiple vehicles are involved.
Folks will be expected to pay the initial parking ticket amount at that time.
“Any ticket they have that has late fees, whether its an $8 citation and it’s moved up to a $36 citation, and if you know you have that citation and you want to get those late fees removed and go back down to the base rate of $8, we ask you to come on in and take care of it,” Salvant says.
No worries for repeat offenders.
“It doesn’t depend on how many tickets you have, you can have from three tickets to 300 tickets, we just want you to come down and get that taken care of. And the late fees, from three months all the way up to three years. So some people have come in that had $200 worth of tickets, got all the late fees removed, and only had to pay $60,” Salvant says.
According to Parking Services, online payments are not eligible for amnesty, and a citizen can only apply for amnesty one time — so be sure to get all your tickets together before going.
“We’re hoping that more people will come out and take advantage of this opportunity,” says Salvant.
