Muncie, Indiana, Let Residents Pay Parking Tickets With Animal Shelter Donations

No driver enjoys finding parking tickets on their windshield, but in Muncie, Indiana, paying those fines recently became an opportunity to help animals in need. As The Hill reports, in mid-July, the city's police department invited citizens to pay off their parking tickets with donations to the local animal shelter, and after just a few days, the experiment proved wildly successful.

The Muncie Police Department announced on July 15 that it was waiving unpaid parking fines in exchange for pet care items of equivalent or greater value. All donations went to Muncie Animal Care & Services—a local shelter and adoption center that's currently caring for more than 350 rescue cats and kittens.

The program lasted from July 15-19, and in that short window, the department was flooded with pet supplies. It received enough cat food, kitty litter, and pet beds to fill a room. And while plenty of the items were brought in by drivers looking to pay their parking fines, many people who donated never had parking tickets to begin with. The Muncie police shared pictures of its haul in the Facebook post below.

Accepting charitable donations as payment for parking tickets is a new policy that's catching on in cities around the country. Different municipalities have experimented with different types of donations: In Lexington, Kentucky, citizens have been able to bring in pantry items, and this summer, Las Vegas began asking for school supplies to pay for tickets.