Client Snapshot
- Municipality: City of Greenville, North Carolina
- Location: Pitt County, eastern North Carolina
- Population Served: ~94,500 residents, plus more than 27,000 East Carolina University students
- Parking Spaces Supported: ~430 timed on-street spaces, 14 surface lots, and one multi-level parking garage in the downtown district
- Enforcement Team: Three full-time and one part-time parking enforcement officers, supported by a centralized collections and permits office
- Industry: Municipal Parking
- Key Solutions: T2 UPsafety® Permit & Enforcement, T2 Citation Services, License Plate Recognition (LPR)
- Partnership Since: 2015
Background
Greenville is the largest city in eastern North Carolina and the cultural and economic heart of Pitt County. It’s also a college town where East Carolina University (ECU), an R1 research institution that enrolled more than 27,000 students in fall 2025, sits at the city’s core and shapes daily life downtown. ECU events, classes, and visitor traffic all funnel into the same compact district where residents live, businesses operate, and the city’s 430 timed on-street spaces serve constant turnover.
Parking is a small department with a big footprint. A team of three full-time officers and one part-time officer covers the entire city Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., supported by a centralized collections office that also handles citation payments, permit applications, and appeals. The city manages an Uptown District of roughly 430 timed spaces, 14 surface lots, and one multi-level parking structure, plus residential permit zones around the ECU campus.
In January 2025, City Council approved a revised downtown parking plan that made the first two hours free in all city-owned lots and on-street spaces, with a modest hourly rate kicking in afterward in the Fourth Street Parking Garage. Enforcement of the new plan began in March 2025. The change made fast, accurate, real-time enforcement more important than ever — every space needed to turn over on schedule, and every officer needed visibility into what every other officer had already done.
The Challenge
Before partnering with T2 Systems, Greenville’s parking operation ran on paper and patchwork software. Officers handwrote tickets in the field. Code enforcement and police officers also issued parking and civil-penalty citations, then routed paper copies back to the collections office through internal mail — sometimes days or even weeks later.
The city used a legacy financial system called Navaline to log citations and the North Carolina DMV’s STARS database for owner lookups. Neither system gave officers or back-office staff real-time visibility, and STARS only returned results for North Carolina plates, leaving the city blind on the significant share of out-of-state vehicles that come through a college town.
“Where here with T2 Systems, either with parking enforcement, code enforcement, or the police, everything is real time. So once they write a citation, it automatically goes into the system. We’re able to see it immediately, so there is no downtime.” — Tronette Greene, Greenville Collections and Parking Supervisor
The biggest pain point wasn’t the technology — it was the lag and the gaps. Citizens would walk into City Hall to pay or appeal a ticket, but the paper copy hadn’t arrived yet. Handwriting on tickets was often illegible. The collections team had to manually re-key every citation into the financial system. And because police officers worked rotating schedules, a citizen might come in to resolve a ticket three or four days before the officer who wrote it returned to the station with the paperwork. Every step introduced delay, duplicate work, and a customer service problem.
The Solution
In 2014, Greenville issued an RFP to replace its existing system. The team had a clear list of requirements: a single integrated device for officers instead of the cumbersome cell-phone-plus-belt-printer setup other vendors offered, real-time data flowing back to the office the moment a citation was issued, and a vendor that would actually be responsive to how Greenville operated.
UPsafety stood out by responding quickly. They put a device in officers’ hands to test, configured the platform to fit Greenville’s workflows, and got the city up and running on a timeline that impressed the team — especially compared with the legacy vendor they were replacing. Greenville implemented UPsafety in 2015 and has been a customer ever since. Shortly after, they expanded to the code-enforcement side of the platform, giving police officers a tool to issue civil-penalty citations — keeping that revenue in the city instead of routing it to the state.
Today Greenville’s UPsafety stack includes:
- Mobile parking enforcement on rugged handheld devices, with photo evidence, GPS, and instant printing
- UPsafety’s code enforcement module for police-issued civil penalties and parking-on-unimproved-surfaces tickets
- Real-time scofflaw alerts that flag repeat offenders and tow-eligible vehicles in the field
- Online permit applications and renewals through the UPsafety patron portal at tocite.net/greenvillenc
- T2 Citation Services for automated late-stage collections beyond 60 and 90 days
- License Plate Recognition (LPR), currently being integrated with the UPsafety platform
Onboarding was hands-on. Drew and Andrew from the UPsafety team came to Greenville, trained the back office, and rode along with officers to make sure the field side was comfortable with the new hardware and software.
“It was very pleasant. They sat down with us and did hands-on training, and the training went very well. They went out with several of the officers to make sure they were comfortable with using the software, and we were up and running in no time.” — Tronette Greene, Greenville Collections and Parking Supervisor
The Results
More than a decade in, UPsafety has reshaped how Greenville’s parking team works — in the field, at the front counter, and in the back office reporting to City Council.
Real-Time Visibility from Field to Front Counter
The single biggest change is speed. The moment an officer issues a citation, the back office can see it. When a citizen walks into City Hall or calls about a ticket, the collections team has the citation, the photos, and the officer’s notes in front of them — not three days later, not after internal mail catches up.
“When a potential violator calls to inquire about a citation, it’s easier to assist that person because we’re seeing actually what the officer is seeing when they’re out in the field. We’re not guessing.” — Corey Barrett, Greenville Parking Liaison
Detailed Notes That End the Run-Around
UPsafety’s notes feature has become an everyday tool for the collections team. Officers and back-office staff log conversations, warnings, and prior violations directly on the record. When a citizen calls back hoping for a different answer from a different staff member, the history is right there.
“They’ll call in, and they’ll try to play off of Linda or Tronette or whomever they’re talking to. And then they’ll wait a day or two and call back in and tell me something totally different. But the notes from Tronette are great — I’ll let them go through their spiel, then I’ll say, ‘Well, you spoke to Miss Greene on this day.’ And then the phone just gets quiet.” — Corey Barrett, Greenville Parking Liaison
Stronger Evidence in the Field and in Court
Photo evidence attached to every citation has changed what enforcement officers can do. The team uses photos not just to back up tickets, but to track vehicles that switch plates or run on expired temporary tags — a recurring issue in a college town. By photographing VIN numbers as a routine practice, officers can verify that a car cited last week is the same car parked illegally today, even when the license plate has changed.
“Even now, we get a lot of cars with fictitious plates. Well, you’ve got a VIN number where you can tie it back to the car.” — Corey Barrett, Greenville Parking Liaison
Permits Managed In-House, Without Vendor Tickets
Greenville’s collections office issues residential permits, employer/employee permits, and ECU-area permits directly through UPsafety’s back office. The portal lets students, downtown employees, and property managers apply online; the collections team approves and tracks everything in one place, with notes attached to each permit record for context the next person needs.
“The permitting side for us in here and the citation side is probably the most impactful, because that’s what we deal with the most. The notes feature is huge — even on permits, we use the notes section to let someone else know what we may need from a student or an employee before we can issue their permit.” — Chasity Whaley, Greenville Collections Officer
Dashboards That Answer Council Questions Fast
Greenville’s leadership team uses UPsafety’s dashboards and reports to answer questions from City Council, citizens, and city management without manually pulling data from disconnected systems. Officer activity, ticket volumes by location, revenue by permit type, and historical trends are all available on demand.
“I also like those pie charts and graphs. Tronette has enlightened me on a lot of those, where you can go in and look at various data. If you’re looking for specifics, you can drill down versus having to look at everything that was done.” — Kevin Brown, Greenville Parking Enforcement Officer
Smarter Collections with T2 Citation Services
Greenville previously used a third-party collection agency that capped notice volume and charged the city directly for collection work. T2 Citation Services replaced that arrangement with automated escalation: tickets flag red at 60 days, notices continue going out beyond the previous limit, and the collection fee is passed to the citizen rather than the city. The flag also helps officers in the field — three red tickets on a vehicle is a clear signal that it’s eligible to be towed.
“It eliminates the guesswork for us. They’re able to automatically, on the 61st day, see all those tickets that are outstanding on the city’s behalf and flag them as unpaid. The previous collection agency passed on the cost to the city. With T2, they put the fee on the citizen.” — Tronette Greene, Greenville Collections and Parking Supervisor
Better Productivity, Fewer Errors
With real-time syncing across the entire enforcement team — parking officers, code enforcement, and police — every officer who arrives at a scene can see what previous officers documented. That consistency means fewer conflicting decisions in front of citizens and fewer judgment calls based on incomplete information.
“If an officer is off duty and another officer has to go address that same call, they’ve got resources to go back to determine what the previous officer did, versus going up to someone and saying ‘hey, this is a violation’ if the other officer said it wasn’t. You’ve got clarity. And that’s the most important part when you’re dealing with a citizen — make sure you pass along the correct information.” — Kevin Brown, Greenville Parking Enforcement Officer
An Early Adopter of Digital Wallet Checkout
After more than a decade together, Greenville has become one of UPsafety’s go-to partners for trying out what’s new. When T2 added Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Link to the UPsafety patron portal in early 2026, Greenville was among the early adopters to put it in front of real citizens. The feedback helped confirm that the experience was ready, and the feature launched across the full UPsafety customer base on March 31, 2026 — with early-rollout numbers showing that about 50% of patron payments were completed through digital wallets.
For Greenville’s collections team, that’s one more friction point gone. Fewer abandoned checkouts, faster payments, and a smoother experience for the residents, ECU students, and visitors who pay through the city’s portal.
Read More: Faster Payments, Better Outcomes: The Role of Digital Wallets in Parking
A Foundation Built to Grow
Greenville is now bringing License Plate Recognition online, integrated with the UPsafety platform, so officers can perform digital chalking and scofflaw checks while driving. After ten years on UPsafety, the city continues to build on the same platform rather than retire it — a strong signal of fit for an evolving downtown.
Advice from Greenville to Other Growing Cities
When asked what advice they’d give to another municipality or college town trying to modernize parking, the Greenville team came back to two things: clear policy paired with education, and a willingness to embrace technology.
“Implement a policy and stick by that policy, whether it’s through enforcement or education. Education is key. If you don’t educate, then most people feel like you’re playing ‘gotcha.’ We’re looking for compliance, not necessarily just a violation.” — Kevin Brown, Greenville Parking Enforcement Officer
“Technology is here. We have to keep up with the time and the age that we’re in. In most small cities or college towns, most people don’t like change. However, in order to stay up to date, we have to accept change and utilize the technologies and services that T2 offers.” — Tronette Greene, Greenville Collections and Parking Supervisorr
Ready to modernize your city’s parking and enforcement operations?
See how municipalities like Greenville modernize enforcement with UPsafety: Full Circle Enforcement: Parking Permits and Tickets with T2 Systems’ UPsafety
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