May 4, 11:09 PM

Brevard waiting for cities overcompensated for traffic fines to pay up

By John Tuohy FLORIDA TODAY

The Brevard County Clerk's office has yet to begin collecting nearly $1.4 million owed to it by nine cities for traffic fines.

The clerk's original plan was to reduce by 50 percent the amount of money it sends to the cities every two weeks for their share of traffic fine collections.

But Clerk Scott Ellis said several cities have asked him to postpone the deduction until they assess the effect the deductions will have on their budgets.

The first reduced payment would have gone out April 15.

"The cities say they want to take a look to see if our numbers match up with their, then they want to discuss it with their city councils," Ellis said.

The municipalities owe the clerk money because of a computer glitch that lasted more than two years.

The software failure prevented the clerk's office from calculating how traffic fines were to be divvied up among the many agencies that get a piece of the revenues. As a result, the clerk's office had to estimate for that period how much each city got.

It turned out nine cities were reimbursed too much, and four were given too little money.

Melbourne and Cocoa owe the clerk's office the most money -- $430,992 and $353,083, respectfully.

Ellis said he has no problem with letting the cities defer payments, but it only means their deductions will be larger when they begin them down the line.

Cocoa Finance Director Ed Nash said the city is willing to begin the deductions now and he wasn't aware that Ellis was not making collections yet.

"We figure we'll start paying now to keep our payments low and do our own research in the meantime," Nash said. "If it turns out the clerk made a mistake we'll correct it later. I guess I need to let Scott know."

In the meantime, Ellis, at the request of officials in West Melbourne, is seeking an independent auditor to review the traffic fines.

Ellis requested the Brevard County Commission appoint the auditor to ensure it is truly independent.

But County Manager Tom Jenkins said there appears to be some confusion about who would pay for the auditor. He said he wrote Ellis a letter asking him to clarify whether he wants the county to pay for it.

"I don't think the county board should have to pay for this," Jenkins said. "This happened in his office, which is separate from us. If you would like the commission to appoint the auditor, so it appears independent, that's fine. But not pay for it."

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryA18378A.htm

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2002

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FL - Cities owe Brevard $1.4 million

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-- Anonymous, May 06, 2002