PINE LAWN, Mo. – A portion of every ticket you pay is supposed to be forwarded from the municipality to a special police training fund. It’s Missouri law. FOX 2 discovered Pine Lawn has not been sending that money since 2016.

Pine Lawn’s City Council attempted to fix that in an emergency meeting Monday after FOX 2 spoke with the city administrator, Lillian Eunice last week.

“They’re not getting the money, and we’re trying to find out why ourselves,” Eunice said.

Eunice said she just learned last week of Pine Lawn’s failure to pay the police training fund in about seven years.

FOX 2 caught onto the problem when reviewing invoices from the North County Police Cooperative (NCPC) to Pine Lawn for police services. At the bottom of almost every invoice, it reads that the Coop “…has not received any law enforcement training funds from the city of Pine Lawn since the inception of the police services contract.”

The NCPC said it’s $2 a ticket, which is tied to more than 29,000 citations since 2016. Altogether, it adds up to almost $60,000, if all the tickets were paid.

Eunis said at the emergency city council meeting that they hoped to find out how many tickets had been paid, so they can forward it on to the police training fund.

She said she doesn’t know why it took so long for the city of Pine Lawn to pay NCPC.

“I’m newer as a city administrator,” Eunice said. “We are going to pay them what we owe them, because that’s what we do. If it’s a financial obligation, we’re going to take care of that.”

Pine Lawn alderman, on Monday, also unanimously voted to pay what they owe to the NCPC for its police services. FOX 2 reported on Thursday, how they’ve been delinquent for years.

Pine Lawn hopes to pay the police service fund by next week. Their contract with the NCPC expires on Oct. 11, giving Pine Lawn just 22 days to find its future police force. The NCPC has said it’s decided to move on.