Jeannette could turn to credit agency to collect unpaid property maintenance fines

Scofflaws who ignore quality of life tickets from Jeannette soon could find themselves hounded by a collection agency.

City officials are looking over a potential contract with Creditech to collect fines from the tickets that are aimed at property maintenance violations, such as furniture in yards and junk vehicles.

Tickets carry a $25 fine for each violation.

Chief fiscal officer Ethan Keedy said officials are looking at potentially raising the amount. It is unclear how many outstanding tickets there are.

A 2017 ordinance established the ticketing process and eliminated the need for notices to be sent prior to citations in an effort to have the problem remedied quicker. In the years following, the tickets were issued by various city officials, which made record keeping difficult to track, fire Chief Bill Frye said.

“It’s going to be hard to follow up,” he said. “I know there’s some landlords that just outright ignored them.”

Frye said the city could begin the collections process with unpaid tickets from 2020 and 2021. He has been issuing them during that time frame. Now, it is the job of property maintenance officer Vincent Pascarella, who was hired in September.

Councilman Chuck Highlands agreed the record-keeping issues would prevent the city from looking back any further.

“Going forward, I wouldn’t have any problem when the records are good,” he said.

Frye told council last week that citizens are correcting the problems but not paying the fines. Pascarella said he added language to the tickets to bring more attention to the fine.

“It’s just a way to put more teeth into this and hopefully get somebody to pay,” he said.

Creditech may charge an 18% fee for the collections that city officials said they intend to pass on to the violator. The matter will have to be approved by council before collections could begin.