Thursday, July 31, 2008

Daley's plan makes more vehicles boot eligible

The city is trying to figure out how to plug a $400 million budget hole, enough for Daley to delay proposing a budget for the next fiscal year. So he's looking at using the revenue from parking tickets and essentially getting tough on those who amass tickets. You might get two tickets and get a boot under a proposal...

Motorists with just two delinquent parking or red-light tickets would face the dreaded Denver boot, under a revenue-generating plan introduced by Mayor Daley Wednesday that infuriated Chicago aldermen.

In 2002, City Hall raked in more than $8.2 million and wiped 242,000 old parking tickets off the books with a carrot-and-stick approach to scofflaws. A six-week parking ticket amnesty was followed by a three-ticket threshold for clamping on the boot. The previous trigger was five unpaid tickets.

Now that Daley is scrounging for every available dollar to plug a $400 million budget shortfall, he wants to lower the bar even further -- to two tickets. The move would generate "tens of millions" of dollars in added revenue, officials said.

OK, but here's some bellyaching and some support:

"Two tickets is not somebody being a scofflaw. You can have two tickets easily -- and need an extra month to pay them -- just by overparking on one location on one day," said Ald. Helen Shiller (46th).

"That's a big mistake. It's too low, and it's too punitive. If you weigh the revenue against the impact on people, I don't think it's worth it. It creates a huge hardship. People need their cars. They're already limiting [their driving] as it is because of gas prices."

At a time when consumers are struggling mightily with layoffs, home foreclosures and skyrocketing food and fuel prices, the city has no business "adding to the hardship" with an unrealistically low boot threshold, said Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th).

"There are many people who have to drive and, try as they might, they get tickets because of density of the neighborhoods they live in. They miss that meter by two or three minutes and that's a ticket. It's not like people are purposely trying to violate the parking laws," Lyle said.

"For us to reduce the booting [threshold] from three to two will certainly provide the city with additional revenue because you'll catch so many more of our constituents. But, that's not the way we should try to balance the budget."

Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers added, "People are struggling already trying to make ends meet. To go to two tickets may be going a little bit too far. Two tickets is an awfully [low number] to come out and boot somebody's car. ... It just seems like we're doing so much to squeeze people when they're already in bad shape."

Revenue Director Bea Reyna-Hickey countered that Chicago can no longer afford to give a pass to drivers with two unpaid tickets.

"When we booted on five tickets, motorists hovered at four. Now that we boot on three tickets, motorists continue to not pay two tickets. This is significant revenue that, for the most part, is over one year old. We need to do all we can to collect it. We know it's in the tens of millions of dollars," Hickey said.

Read the whole thing see what else might be affected by this attempt to generate revenue for the city.

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