When Casey Groff got in her car last week to head to work, she noticed a ticket on the windshield.

“I thought it was for parking too close to a crosswalk or something,” said Groff, who lives in Portland’s West End. “But when I read it, it said ‘unregistered car,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ ”

The 28-year-old bought her car in May 2021, and has renewed the registration every May since. She thought she had a few more months before it expired. But when she went to City Hall to fight the ticket it turned out the registration had expired in December.

“So, it was my bad,” she said. “But I didn’t even know I was doing anything wrong. It had never been a problem before.”

Portland parking enforcement staff, not just police, are now ticketing for expired vehicle registrations. While letting registrations lapse has always come with the risk of a fine, drivers typically only risked a ticket when they were driving.

The Portland City Council voted unanimously in October to amend the city’s parking regulations to include, among other things, a new $35 violation for unregistered cars.

A few months later, the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office also started encouraging law enforcement officers to issue civil instead of criminal summonses for expired registrations because of a backlog in cases.

But a spokesperson for the city insisted this isn’t a “crackdown” on unregistered cars – and that the city’s parking enforcement division is actually understaffed.

Since the new regulations went into effect on Nov. 15, the city has issued 1,567 tickets for unregistered vehicles. Just under 300 of those tickets have been forgiven and almost 500 have been paid, according to data provided by the city.

John Peverada, the city’s parking manager, said his department was already pursuing changes to the ordinance when his staff noticed an uptick in unregistered vehicles parked on the street – a trend he says had been building since the pandemic.

Peverada says this was “concerning, because it indicated that excise taxes are not paid.” The annual registration fee, which varies based on a car’s value, goes to the city and is a source of revenue.

Shawn Thomas, 33, recently realized his registration expired in February. But so far, he’s been able to avoid a ticket. The city policy gives owners a two-month grace period to get the registration up to date. And once a ticket has been issued, it can be forgiven if the vehicle is registered within 30 days.

“Things have been busy,” Thomas said. “I’m closing on a house right now, car’s been in the shop, too. A month is not that bad.”

Thomas said he did get a warning from a police officer, though.

“She was cool about it, just reminded me to go get it registered. No big deal,” he said.

Some Portlanders say they aren’t too worried about the change.

Tyler Reed, 41, said he’s never let his registration expire. While he’d like to see less frequent street sweeping and more parking in the West End, he doesn’t mind the new regulation.

“My mom drove that into my brain, to never miss registering my car,” he said.

Portland residents have long complained about heavy ticketing in the city.

“The parking has really changed over the years,” said Emily Campobasso, a bar manager at Commercial Street Pub, where she has worked for 30 years.

Campobasso, 50, said she usually parks in the alley behind the bar for free, that way when she finishes her late shift she can walk out the back door and get right in her car. She doesn’t want to walk through town with cash late at night.

“For years it was just a nicety that they never ticketed me, but in the past few weeks I’ve gotten three tickets for it,” she said.

On Thursday afternoon, Sam Higgins had just arrived back at his car to top off his meter when he noticed a ticket on his windshield.

Higgins, 42, is a carpenter working on a project downtown. He said he has to step away from work every two hours to move his car or top off his meter to avoid tickets.

“I missed it by two minutes,” he said, shaking his head.

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