Aspen’s multi-year parking scam may not be resolved. The city is considering suing to get back some of the money it lost. Aspen Public Radio’s Carolyn Sackariason reports.
Officials claim they were lied to by the company that sold them the pay stations. The city’s parking department thought the company, Precise Park, was flagging debit cards with zero balances when they were processed the end of each day. Randy Ready is assistant city manager.
“All the information we had from the vendor was that they were able to blacklist. That was not the case at least from some point in 2009 on because of changes in the credit card industry. That was a mistaken impression on our part,” he says.
That left Ready and other officials in the dark about people abusing parking meters with zeroed out prepaid debit cards. In the end, the city was duped out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Because Precise has a fiduciary responsibility to the city as its client, it may be held liable. City manager Steve Barwick says litigation is not out of the question.
“Yes, we are considering going after Precise Park," he says.
The parking director at the time told his superiors Precise assured him blacklisting was allowed. But it couldn’t have been because industry laws don’t allow accessing all 16 digits on a card. Both Barwick and Ready say they or anyone else in city government were aware of that change in the U.S. law.
When they learned about the parking fraud last year, officials also learned Precise could blacklist the first four numbers of a card. That is how they were able to stop the biggest offenders, who were racking up thousands of dollars in free parking every month.
The police investigation to find the offenders continues, and the city now has new pay stations that can catch a debit card without any money on it. City Attorney Jim True declined to comment on the pending litigation but says suing Precise would ultimately be a decision made by city council.
Carolyn Sackariason, Aspen Public Radio news.
