Mapping parking enforcement
in Santa Cruz

The City of Santa Cruz publishes parking citation data through an online AIMS (Automated Issuance Management System) portal where anyone can look up a citation by its number.

Citation numbers follow a predictable format: SC{device} {year}{sequence}. For example, SC3 2600042 is the 42nd citation from device SC3 in 2026.

Our scraper checks for new citations every few minutes by querying the next expected sequence number for each of the 8 active enforcement devices. When new citations are found, they are geocoded and stored in a database, and appear on the live map in real-time via WebSocket push.

The city operates 8 enforcement devices labeled SC1 through SC8. These are hardware units, not individual officers.

SC8 is notably the busiest, accounting for roughly 25% of all tickets. Its volume suggests it is likely a vehicle-mounted License Plate Recognition (LPR) system, while the others appear to be handheld units used by parking enforcement officers on foot.

No personally identifiable information (PII) is stored. License plate numbers and VINs are explicitly stripped before any data enters our database. We only store citation details that are already publicly available: location, time, violation type, fine amount, and vehicle make/model/color.

All data comes from the City of Santa Cruz's public AIMS portal. Parking citation data is public record under the California Public Records Act (CPRA).

We scrape at a low rate (a few requests per minute) with a descriptive User-Agent header to be respectful of city infrastructure.

What is SlugMeter?

SlugMeter is a real-time parking citation tracker for the City of Santa Cruz, California. It maps where and when parking tickets are issued, with a searchable archive of over 218,000 citations dating back to 2019.

Where does the data come from?

All data comes from the City of Santa Cruz's public AIMS (Automated Issuance Management System) portal. Parking citation data is public record under the California Public Records Act (CPRA). Our scraper checks for new citations every few minutes.

Is personal information collected?

No. License plate numbers and VINs are explicitly stripped before any data enters our database. We only store publicly available citation details: location, time, violation type, fine amount, and vehicle make/model/color.

How often is the data updated?

The live map updates in real-time — new citations appear within minutes of being issued via WebSocket push. Historical data is continuously backfilled and currently covers 2019 through 2026.

Ivan Kuria

Student at UC Santa Cruz. Built this because I recently got a ticket lol :)

LinkedInGitHub

Inspired by the work of Ryan Walz on SF parking citation visualization.