Computer System Sales Bring Needed Cash to City : Finances: Inglewood’s information czar has combined technical know-how with a grasp of municipalities’ needs to raise a new source of cash.
Privatization may be today’s hot trend in some cities, as municipal officials look for ways to cut costs amid withering economic conditions.
Inglewood, though, is pioneering “publicization,” says a jovial James Nyman, the city’s computer czar.
Nyman has reason to be cheerful this week. His ingenuity with computer systems and his familiarity with municipal government--he’s a councilman in Palos Verdes Estates--has produced two new contracts for Inglewood’s information systems department, which now boasts annual sales of more than $1 million.
That has put Inglewood head-to-head in the marketplace with the major private firm in the same business, Lockheed IMS, a subsidiary of Lockheed Corp., the giant aircraft and defense contractor.
The Sacramento City Council on Monday chose Inglewood over Lockheed to supply the hardware, the systems and the training for the computerized handling and collection of traffic citations, especially delinquent ones.
That sale is worth $300,000, of which $75,000 will be profit pumped into Inglewood’s general fund annually for the next three years.
Also this week, the city of South Pasadena decided to drop Lockheed and contract with Inglewood to handle its processing of traffic citations.
“We’re now the second-largest processor (of traffic citations) in the state of California,” Nyman said. Lockheed is the first.
Nyman added: “To me, the story is that sometimes government can do things well.”
In the South Bay, Inglewood is handling the traffic citation process for the cities of Torrance, Lawndale, Hawthorne and Palos Verdes Estates.
In addition, Inglewood has developed systems that process utility billing and collection. The city of Fresno bought that system. And about 30 cities in Los Angeles County have bought another Inglewood-designed and serviced system that makes changes directly onto the county assessor’s property tax rolls.
“The assessor loves it,” said Inglewood City Manager Paul D. Eckles, explaining that the assessor’s office is practically begging cities to buy the service because it makes the assessor’s job so much easier.
Cities can tap directly into the assessor’s tax rolls and add the value of improvements to a building or make the necessary changes when a building is built on a vacant lot. The more up-to-date the assessor’s rolls, the more quickly the cities realize new tax revenues.
What makes Inglewood the best buy for such services, Nyman said, is that he’s a city councilman and former mayor himself, and those working with him are city employees. Everybody involved, he said, is up-to-date on what problems face cities and how new federal and state legislation affects the municipalities.
More important, Nyman says, is that Inglewood, not a wealthy city itself, is keenly aware of how important revenue flow is to every city.
“Lawndale, before they joined us, had never realized more than $168,000 a year” on traffic citations, Nyman said. “Without writing one additional ticket, in the first year with us they recovered $393,000.”
Because collection rates on traffic citations are notoriously poor, Nyman said, South Bay cities collect an average of $15 for every ticket they write. Inglewood can offer cities an average collection of $25 for every ticket they write, he says.
“I made $2.5 million last year in parking citations” for Inglewood, Nyman said. “Our focus is necessarily always on creative ways to raise more money.”
What is spurring Inglewood’s drive to win parking citation contracts, along with Lockheed’s push to do the same, is a change in state law that takes effect in January. Historically, municipal courts processed traffic tickets and collected the fines. The state, however, doesn’t want courts doing the chore anymore.
“All the cities,” Nyman said, must “find a new way to process their parking tickets, because the courts can’t.”
Inglewood, though, took over that job from its court more than a decade ago, and Nyman already had a system in place.
Additionally, local governments are now so desperate for revenues that they are casting about for better collection systems for fines they levy, and the state has made changes that oblige them.
For example, last year the state adopted legislation allowing cities to tap into computerized state income tax records in order to collect on unpaid traffic tickets. Inglewood was the first city to do so, a move that netted another $60,000 in collections.
Nyman and his team are one of the most valuable assets the city of Inglewood has, said Eckles, the city manager. The city, he added, is even talking now about setting up some sort of nonprofit corporation to sell the systems Nyman and his crew create.
