Kennebunkport is a quaint town nestled on the Northern Atlantic coast of Maine. Known for its pristine beaches, lobster and friendly downtown area, it attracts thousands of tourists a year and is a prime second home destination.
BEFORE PASSPORT
Officials were manually running the enforcement operations with five different touch points from ticket issuance to courthouse and collections. Officers would handwrite tickets, which were then manually entered into a spreadsheet; a process that could sometimes take up to five hours a week. The town would then cross reference new tickets against old tickets to identify license plates with multiple unpaid offenses, as well as recently paid tickets. The finance team was responsible for manually tracking all tickets and unpaid citations, and at the end of each summer, town officials would combine citations and send notifications to offenders with unpaid tickets. This disjointed process created gaps and an opportunity for errors within the system.
WHY PASSPORT
When choosing a new enforcement solution, the town of Kennebunkport evaluated three different systems. They were searching for a solution that integrated with other partners, including Flowbird, was user-friendly and could grow with their operation. Ultimately, they decided Passport met their needs while staying within budgetary constraints.
WITH PASSPORT
Given that Kennebunkport is a popular vacation destination, outstanding unpaid tickets are the norm. Before Passport, Carol Kloth, Police Administrator, had to correlate unpaid tickets into a spreadsheet, send them to town hall for evaluation and then manually look up addresses to hand-mail notices. This process became even more convoluted when the outstanding citation was associated with a rental car and had to be rebilled. If violators didn’t pay after two notices, the team would recalculate fees owed before passing the information to a collections agency. Passport’s back-end system automates this entire process indicating who owes what and when. Furthermore, Passport’s integrations and partnerships with rental car companies help with tracking and billing the actual car renters.
In addition to manually tracking outstanding tickets, the team tracked scofflaw violators in a spreadsheet, and officers used personal notebooks to chalk cars. Those notes would then have to be passed along to the next officer on the same beat. With Passport, the team receives automatic scofflaw notifications when they come across a violator and they have access to digital chalking helping save time.
Passport’s digital enforcement solution has streamlined the entire enforcement process and increased overall efficiency. “Passport is helping us save on average 15 hours a week during our peak summer season,” said Kloth. “The back-end system allows all parties involved in the citation process, including on-street officers, the finance team, the court and collections, to have access to the back-end system, eliminating duplication throughout the system.”