the South Carolina town "Isle of Palms" on the outer banks islands East of Charleston, finally figured out how to make money. Parking ticket enforcement, but, only if outsourced to a contractor.... I kid you not. The city employees utterly failed to do half as well at ticketing

 in one third of a calendar year, (4 months) the contractor company outworked the city employees previous year (12 months)

From the beginning of May to Labor Day weekend, a four-month stretch that draws thousands of visitors to the beach, over 5,600 parking tickets were handed out on the Isle of Palms by the contacted company, more tickets than were issued in all of 2023.  https://visitisleofpalmssc.com/isle-of-palms-parking/

As the summer bore on and visitors became familiar with the more-present parking enforcement, the number of tickets slowly decreased, from 1,900 in May to just over 750 by the end of August.

This contractor is on duty through 2026 according to the city administrator

The results of the tickets, after the 76/24 split? 300k, just in tickets.... the contractor gets the 24%, the city gets 76%... more than the cities entire year of income from the court system.... 

Forecasts included in the city’s 2025 budget estimated the city would see $300,000 from court-generated revenue for the fiscal year, which encompasses parking fines.

From May 1 to Aug. 31, the city surpassed this estimation in parking tickets alone.

The contractor took over the job of parking enforcement in March, as city officials said outsourcing the service would free up the Isle of Palms Police Department to focus on high-priority calls for service and better visibility on the beaches. 

 IOPPD Sgt. Matthew Storen said the department is still gathering data to analyze how response times changed after contracting with PCI Municipal Services.  (subtext, the cops can't prove this did anything positive other than more time eating donuts) 

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/parking-tickets-isle-of-palms/article_dc15b014-6ebc-11ef-8bf4-fbf0ede46050.html

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/opinion-letters-isle-of-palms-parking-fees-charleston-county-526-extension/article_62ba7a9c-2da8-11ef-8de8-17d1d6f1e49a.html