Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Court Fines Collections topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County consultant reports falling delinquent-ticket roll, $3.5 million collected in payments
Summary
Purdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins & Mott LLP reported to the Henderson County Commissioners Court on its collections work for the county’s Justice of the Peace courts, saying the firm has turned over nearly $8 million in cases for collection over the life of the contract and that more is being removed from the roll each year than is being added.
Doug Burnside, a partner with Purdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins & Mott LLP, told the Henderson County Commissioners Court that the firm has worked on collection of delinquent Justice of the Peace fines in the county since 2013 for one precinct and since 2017 for the remaining precincts.
"We've had almost $8,000,000 turned over to us for collections," Burnside said. He told the court the firm has resolved $5,660,000 of that total, which the firm describes as including about $3,500,000 in payments. Burnside said the firm’s approach relies on updating contact information and communicating with defendants: "The best method of collections is communications with the debtors."
The firm reported detailed work on outreach: more than 100,000 mailed letters, more than 55,000 phone calls, 13,000 address updates and more than 5,000 phone-number updates. Burnside broke down collections by precinct, saying Precinct 1 had the highest payment percentage at 52% with just under $2 million in turnover, and that Precinct 2 is the largest volume precinct. He credited Judge Norris’ court (Precinct 5) for a major cleanup of older cases through reductions, dismissals and other resolutions.
Burnside said that in the last year the firm received $372,000 in new fines for collection and reported roughly $319,000 in payments and nearly $100,000 in resolutions during the same period. "We are removing more from the roll than is being added to it each year," he said, summarizing the recent trend.
Commissioners asked whether Henderson County’s outstanding-amount percentage is typical; Burnside replied the county’s collection percentages are "really, really high" compared with other counties his firm serves. He and other presenters noted that older accounts become harder to collect because defendants move or die, and that collection work is constrained when debtors live out of county or out of state.
The firm also displayed a ZIP-code map showing where tickets were issued; Burnside noted a few out-of-state addresses in recent years. The court had no substantive follow-up motions on the presentation; the report was received during the regular session.
