Although the feeling of seeing a parking ticket on the windshield may not lose much of its sting, paying for it could get a little easier.

State College is currently researching an online payment system that will give those who have received parking tickets the ability to review and pay their tickets from a computer, Borough Parking Office Manager Karen Martin said.

The borough parking officers issued about 69,500 parking tickets last year, all of which had to be processed by hand, Martin said.

"[The Web site] is going to reduce the amount of transactions we have to do over the counter and the amount of mail we receive every day," Martin said.

Because borough officials are still in the "research phase," there is no timeline for when the system will be put into use, State College Borough Information Technology Director Tim Grattan said.

State College Borough Council member Craig Humphrey said a main goal is to relieve some of the clerical burden of processing paper tickets and to enable the people who would be processing those tickets to complete other duties.

Recipients would be able to submit appeals online with the new system. The parking officer who issued the ticket would then submit an assessment, and a decision would then be made on whether the appeal would be granted, Martin said.

She added the current timeline for completing an appeal with the parking office is about 30 to 45 days. With the new system, the time between filing an appeal and receiving a decision will be shorter, Martin said.

"We're hoping it will make things more efficient in the office and more convenient for the customer," she said.

The borough receives about 900 appeals a year, Martin said.

Dave Mears, a regional manager at Cardinal Tracking, the company that makes the system, said feedback from areas that already have the system in place has been positive.

He said people tend to log on and see they have more than one parking ticket that has not been paid and usually end up paying for every ticket because of the systems' easy transaction process.

"It's a better collection system," Mears said. "[The borough gets] all of the money, not just some of the money."

The system is also very secure, since all transactions go through online payment companies such as PayPal, Mears said.