Everything There is to know about Receiving a Municipal Fine in Greeley

*The intensity of rapid blue and red lights flashing in the mirror stirs up nerves so strong that you feel like shaking. Anxiety, guilt and the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next floods your mind. Your thoughts and movements are taken over by fear. You try to stay calm and shake off the embarrassment of being a law-breaker for violating one of the city’s traffic regulations.¹

An officer approaches your driver’s side window, describes the reasons you’ve been pulled over, asks for your license, registration and proof of insurance, and then walks back to their police cruiser to write up a ticket. The officer returns, hands you a ticket and quickly explains the details and instructions associated with your penalty.²

The major details of your ticket are the fine, the surcharge and the fee for court costs. The amount your fine costs is based on the specific traffic regulation you’ve broken. Each fine amount for all the different violations can be found in Greeley Municipal Court’s Schedule of Fines.³ There is a maximum fine for both infractions and offenses: $500 fine maximum for infractions and $1,000 for offenses.⁴ The city’s Schedule of Fines is taken directly from Colorado Revised Statutes, meaning Greeley uses the same guidelines as the state for fine amounts.⁵ The Schedule of Fines is approved by Greeley City Council. If you attend court, you’ll see a copy of this Schedule of Fines “prominently posted in a place where fines are to be paid.”⁶

The court surcharge on your ticket is $20 and the court costs are $10.⁷ Greeley’s Schedule of Fines makes clear that the court surcharge and court costs “shall be added to the fine of all penalty assessments pursuant to Greeley Municipal Code 2.08.291.” Authorization for these fees (and all other fees found in Greeley’s Fee Directory) comes from Section 1.05.010 of Greeley Municipal Code.⁸ In Greeley’s Fee Directory, “Court Costs” are actually listed as the “Police Training Fee” (and the “Court Surcharge” is listed as “Court Fees”).⁹ Court costs go directly into the Greeley Police Department’s budget to pay for officer training. Greeley’s use of funds obtained from the “Court Surcharge” differs from the state’s designation for these funds.¹⁰ State law calls for half of the amount of the surcharge to be deposited into the “Victims and Witnesses Assistance and Law Enforcement Fund” and the other half into the “Crime Victim Compensation Fund.” In Greeley, according to Section 1.05.010, the “Court Surcharge” is used to “defray the cost of providing certain administrative services, as well as the cost of making available for public use certain City facilities.” In other words, the surcharge is used to keep the lights on at Greeley Municipal Court.

Your traffic ticket also comes with a penalty that’s going to negatively affect your driving record. Next to where the amount of your fine is written there’s a number by the words “Total Points.”¹¹ These points are going to be added to your driving record. If you rack up 12 or more points within 12 months or 18 or more points within 24 months, your driver’s license will be suspended.¹² The number of points issued for each violation is decided by Colorado’s Division of Motor Vehicles.¹³ This points system also relates to your fine. As Greeley Municipal Court’s Schedule of Fines shows, each point penalty (“0,” “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” “6”) has its own fine amount (from $60 to $175).¹⁴

Turning to the back of your ticket you see that you’re required to pay your fine within 30 days.¹⁵ Paying within this time will be rewarded with a reduction in your point penalty.¹⁶ If you don’t pay within this time, your ticket will turn into a “Summons & Complaint.” If you are like most “violators” or “respondents,” as Greeley Municipal Court refers to those who’re ticketed,¹⁷ you’d simply pay your fine online (there’s a 5.95% Online Payment Processing Fee to pay online), through mail or in person within the 30 days.¹⁸ But, let’s say, for whatever reason, unlike the majority of those ticketed you’re unable to get your fine paid within this time. As a result, your ticket becomes a “Summons & Complaint,” meaning you’re now required to appear in court on the date and time specified on your ticket for what’s known as an “arraignment.”¹⁹ At arraignment, additional fees may be included (fees such as Collection Fees, Criminal Justice Records, Deferred Sentence Fee, Docket Fees, Driver’s License Assessment Fee, Insufficient Funds Fee, Late Payment Fee, Prosecution Costs, Supervised Probation Fee, Useful Public Service [Fee] and Warrant Processing Fees).²⁰ As Greeley’s Schedule of Fines warns, “Should a Defendant choose to come to Court rather than taking advantage of the fine in lieu of proceedings (penalty assessment) as outlined, additional fees and costs (including docket fees) may apply.”

When you first enter the Greeley Municipal Court building for arraignment you’re directed to take a seat in a large, open room and wait to be called to meet with a city attorney (or a public defender if your income is less than 125% of the federal poverty guidelines) (R. Caldwell, personal communication, August 23, 2016).²¹ City attorneys work on behalf of the City of Greeley and public defenders work on behalf of violators. City attorneys and public defenders will both negotiate with the Court in an attempt to have your fines and point penalties reduced. Public defenders negotiate for lower fines and point penalties in order to produce the best outcome for violators. City attorneys negotiate for lower fines and point penalties in order to sway violators into pleading guilty, which saves the Court time and money. Agreeing to accept the outcome of this negotiation with the city attorney results in what’s known as a plea-bargain. A plea-bargain requires violators to admit they’re guilty and agree not to fight their ticket in exchange for lighter penalties. At the end of your meeting with the city attorney, you decide to accept a plea-bargain, as most violators do.

Once you’ve finished meeting with a city attorney you return to the room you were waiting in before. This time you wait in line to see a court clerk at one of the clerk windows. Your plea-bargain has already been sent over to the court clerk’s office, so once you make it to a clerk’s window your plea-bargain is immediately filed and a guilty judgment is entered on your case. The court clerk then asks if you’re able to pay the now-reduced fine in full today. If you can, then you pay your fine and move on with your life.

But if you can’t pay the full amount of your fine on the day of your arraignment, the court clerk will proceed to provide you with some options. First, you’re offered the option of making payments. There’s a fee to set up payment arrangements that ranges from $25 to $50.²² Under this payment plan, payments are due every two weeks for the first three payments (Court session, December 14, 2017). You must return to court to make each of these payments, a tactic the ACLU of Colorado claims is used to get around laws enacted to prevent what are known as debtors’ prisons.²³ If you’re able to attend court to make each of your first three payments then you’ll be allowed to make your remaining payments every other month afterwards without having to return to court to do so. You can choose how much you want your first payment to be without any required minimum. The lower the payment amount you choose, though, the longer it’s going to take you to pay off your balance. But Greeley Municipal Court’s Administrator Roxanna Caldwell says that in cases where it’s taking a violator an extended period of time to pay off their fine, the judge will likely close out their balance at some point and waive all other remaining penalties (R. Caldwell, personal communication, August 23, 2016). Of course, this is only if the violator is showing an effort to pay off their balance, meaning they’re consistently paying their payments on time or at least keeping in contact with the court if they fall behind. It’s completely up to the judge how long a case will go on before deciding to waive a violator’s remaining balance, but it’s fair to assume this wouldn’t be done before at least several months had passed. In fact, it’s not exceptionally rare for Greeley Municipal Court to see cases go on for up to five or six years (R. Caldwell, personal communication, June 13, 2017).

The second option you’re offered is to complete Useful Public Service as an alternative to paying for your fine with money. The way Useful Public Service works is you volunteer at a court-approved nonprofit organization of your choosing and every hour of Useful Public Service you complete counts as $10 towards the balance of what you owe. There’s a fee for arranging this option ($25 in Greeley Municipal Court).²⁴

Once you agree to paying payments, completing Useful Public Service or a combination of both, you’re handed what’s called an “Informal Stay of Execution” (SOE).²⁵ This is a court document that outlines the agreement you’re making to either pay payments or perform Useful Public Service, the terms of this agreement, the time frame for completion and the penalties for not following requirements of this agreement.

The SOE begins by explaining “continuances.” A continuance will give you extra time to pay the full amount of your fine or complete Useful Public Service. There’s a “time payment fee or stay of execution fee” of $25 for a one-month extension and $50 for a three-month extension.²⁶ The first bullet point on the SOE claims you’re allowed only two continuances, but it seems more continuances can actually be granted by the judge, given you can provide a reasonable explanation for why you still need time to pay your fine.²⁷ As an important side-note, the time payment fee is a one-time charge, so there’s no additional time payment fee for any future extensions down the road (R. Caldwell, personal communication, June 13, 2017).

On the last day of your continuance, the full amount of your fine remains unpaid. As the SOE warns, “if you cannot pay the total amount due by the time payment/SOE date [end of your continuance], then you are ordered to appear in court . . . on the date outlined below.” This means you’re again required to report to municipal court at 8 a.m. and wait in line at the clerk’s window to discuss your case. You inform the court clerk that you still won’t be paying in full today and will be needing a second continuance. You accept the conditions of another continuance, sign a new SOE and leave the courthouse with an extra month to finish paying off your balance.

If, unfortunately, over the course of your second continuance you still haven’t been able to finish paying off your balance, you’re again required to return to court. This time when you admit to the court clerk that you still won’t be paying off the full amount of your fine, the court clerk responds by asking you to have a seat and wait to be called into the courtroom to see the Municipal Court Judge. In the courtroom, the judge examines your case and hears your testimony before determining whether or not to give you another continuance. The judge looks over your finances to see if you’re struggling to pay because of financial hardship, listens as you explain circumstances that might be keeping you from paying and seeks out any other reasons for your inability to pay.

If the judge eventually finds there’s good reason to believe you deserve more time, the process repeats itself once again: you again try to pay off your balance before the end of your continuance, and if you can’t, then you return to court. This process can go on for months and months, and possibly even years before the judge finally decides to either quit giving you more continuances or to close out your remaining balance, waive all other remaining penalties and let you go free.

If, at some point, for whatever reason, you begin to miss payments or stop completing Useful Public Service hours, when your continuance runs out and you return to court, the judge refuses to issue you another continuance because she believes you’re now showing a lack of effort. The judge enters a final judgement on your case for “failure to timely pay the total amount due” and issues an Outstanding Judgment Warrant (OJW). ²⁸ It’s important to note that what’s considered “timely” is completely up to the judge. For some judges, entering a final judgement and issuing an OJW is a last resort. These judges say they will grant continuance after continuance to violators as long as they fully cooperate with the Court and show a real effort to pay off their fine. Other judges will enter a final judgement immediately upon a violator’s initial failure to pay.

The OJW the judge issues results in “the Department of Motor Vehicles placing a hold on [your] driving privileges,”²⁹ a practice the Department of Justice criticized in a 2016 letter issued at the conclusion of its “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” that made specific recommendations to courts.³⁰ A $30 fee is added to your balance for the processing and handling of this warrant.³¹ Furthermore, the hold on your license will not be removed until you’ve either paid off or worked off the full amount of your fine or have had all of your debts to the Court forgiven by the judge.³² You will also face a number of obstacles in reinstating your license once the hold is removed.

You’re sent a notice of the hold that’s placed on your license, which informs you that if you’re pulled over once this hold is in place you’ll be arrested and taken to jail. If you’re not present in court when the OJW is issued, or you never receive a notice because of a wrong address or a mailing error, you will still be arrested if caught driving while the hold is in place unless you’re able to prove you were never notified. There are no exceptions otherwise.³³

If, for any number of reasons, you make the decision to continue driving while a hold is on your license and you’re pulled over once again, the officer will see that your license is suspended and proceed to cuff you and put you in the back of a cop car (Greeley Police Department, ride-along, August 15, 2017).³⁴ When this happens, your car will also be towed if you can’t find someone to pick it up within the time the cop who pulled you over will allow. The costs for being towed and the resulting fees for impounding your car will all be billed directly to you. You will also receive a new three-point ticket that’s ineligible for a points or fine reduction.^{35 and 36} The process you go through once you’re jailed is a whole other story that’s far too complex to get into here.

Your case is now entered in as a final judgement and, according to Greeley Municipal Court’s SOE, “any unpaid balance at the time of a failure to pay shall be turned over to a collection agency.”³⁷ You’re charged a 35% “referral fee” to pay for the costs of transferring your unpaid balance to the collection agency.³⁸ Remember, unpaid balances turned over to collection agencies can remain on your credit report for up to seven years. This is the court’s last effort at incentivizing you to pay off your fine.

After all this, it should be noted that some fees and the possibility of being arrested for failing to pay would not be the case if your annual income was less than 125% of the federal poverty guidelines. At such a low-income level, paying a municipal fine is going to be either impossible or a detrimental financial burden. For this reason, most penalties are reduced for those who qualify for indigence. In addition, putting someone in jail simply for their inability to pay a fine would create a debtors’ prisons.

The most serious subject covered in Greeley Municipal Court’s SOE is Failure to Appear bench warrants. Greeley Municipal Court’s SOE states that “failure to appear in Court when ordered will result in a Failure to Appear (‘FTA’) bench warrant being issued in all eligible cases.” An FTA bench warrant is an arrest warrant, meaning any interaction a violator has with Greeley Police while this warrant is in place could end with their being arrested and taken to jail. Multiple city officials insist warrants are never issued for traffic infractions. However, both the Court’s SOE and website make statements that might have violators believing otherwise.³⁹ First, in addition to the warning about the possibility of an FTA bench warrant mentioned above, the Court’s SOE also states that “Failure to timely pay the total amount due as ordered will result in and Outstanding Judgment Warrant (“OJW”) in all traffic and other eligible cases.” Second, Greeley Municipal Court’s website states, “It is important that you make payments on time or appear in Court on that date. Failing to do so can result in the following: A Bench Warrant issued for your arrest.”⁴⁰ Again, no distinction is made to clarify in which cases this is a possibility. Lastly, a quick look at the Weld County Jail’s “Daily Arrest Report” reveals individuals charged with Failure to Appear stemming from a Municipal Court case.⁴¹ It’s unclear why multiple warnings about the possibility of arrest exist if traffic infractions cannot end in jail time.

Well, you’ve come a long way. You were ticketed, couldn’t pay, came to court, still couldn’t pay, were given options and more time, paid numerous fees, came back to court and still couldn’t pay, repeated this process until you were considered by the Court to have “neglected” to pay, had your car towed, were given a new, additional ticket, taken to jail, paid numerous fees, now owe collections and even after all this you’re still left with an outstanding balance, another ticket and a hold on your license. As you’ve seen, there’s much more to municipal fines than most people think. At times, you were probably overwhelmed and confused by the process, which should be expected as even those who work for the courts struggle to explain the entire process. “Well, it all depends” is often the only way the finer details of municipal fines are explained. Given the difficulty in navigating all the information presented here, it’s impossible to expect any violator to understand much of the process and implications surrounding municipal fines, let alone all of it. Therefore, it’s fair to say that without being provided a full outline of municipal fines as is presented here, violators are forced to go blind through their entire municipal fines experience.