The city of Portland is owed more than $3.7 million in unpaid parking tickets at a time when it is considering raising property taxes to boost the budget.

WGME-TV reports that more than 171,000 parking tickets issued in the city have gone unpaid since 2008.

The city’s power to collect on those unpaid tickets is limited. A vehicle can’t get booted or towed until it has three unpaid tickets.

And unlike some states, Maine doesn’t require parking tickets to be paid before it will allow a driver to renew their license or update their vehicle’s registration.

Efforts to tie unpaid tickets to renewals have failed in the Legislature.

Still, about 75 percent of the tickets issued each year are paid, and about $2 million in parking fines is collected annually.


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