In the last four years, the Provincial Offences Office with City of Hamilton has collected $45-million-dollars in paid fines. But over that same period, they’ve had to write off close to $4-million -dollars in unpaid fines. they’re asking council to write off even more.

Hamilton City Council will decide next week whether to write off more than a million dollars in unpaid fines. In 2000, the City of Hamilton took over the Provincial Offences Office from the province, at that time there was roughly 24 million dollars outstanding, that’s now close to 70 million.

The first write off was close to ten million dollars around 2003, every year since then, the city has had to write off about another million. The city also uses internal and external collection agencies to get offenders to pay up.

While the annual million dollar write offs hurt, last year the provincial offences office brought in close to 12 million dollars in paid fines.