Do Mississauga parking enforcement officers have a ticket quota?

The answer to that question depends on who you ask. The union representing parking enforcement officers would say their members have a quota, but the city says their parking officers have a “performance standard.”

Screen grabs of apparent emails obtained by The Mississauga News appear to show managers of the city’s parking enforcement officers outlining a “penalty notice per shift” expectation of 25 tickets for days and afternoons, and 37 for nights.

The screen grabs were emailed to city communications staff, who were asked whether they were sent by Mississauga parking enforcement managers, and if officers are required to issue 25 tickets during the day and afternoon shifts and 37 on the night shift.

Mississauga spokesperson Carley Smith DeBenedictis did not deny that the emails were sent by the city’s parking enforcement management staff, or the amount of tickets, but said the penalty notice standards “were based on an annual average, not a fixed number of tickets to be issued on every shift.”

"These are not quotas, and they are not applied in the manner of a quota, which would require every officer to issue a fixed number of tickets on every shift,” she said.

Smith DeBenedictis also said that since the city is in the process of negotiating the initial collective bargaining agreement with the parking enforcement officers, “we are refraining from providing further details.”

Marc Xuereb, a representative with Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents parking enforcement officers in the city, said the three screen-grab emails were sent by Mississauga’s parking enforcement managers to the city’s officers.

He said the per-shift numbers from the screen grabs are what city parking officers are expected to issue every day.

Whether the city calls them a quota or not, Xuereb said the effect is the same. If the numbers are not reached daily, the parking officers fear it will be “used for performance evaluation and possibly discipline,” he said.