PARKING PROTECTION

December 16, 2003

Chicago Sun Times

Payment plan in works for parking scofflaws ; Council moves to help drivers get off Denver boot list

Fran Spielman

Parking ticket scofflaws who agree to stick to a payment plan may soon be able to get their names off the City Hall blacklist for motorists eligible for the wheel-locking Denver boot.

Led by lakefront Ald. Helen Shiller (46th), the City Council is demanding that Mayor Daley give beleaguered drivers now eligible for the boot after three unpaid tickets a break before tightening the noose with higher parking fines.

Last month, Shiller introduced an ordinance co-signed by all but three aldermen to establish a first-ever payment plan that would allow motorists to get their names off the list that city boot crews use to hunt down cars on the streets of Chicago and at O'Hare Airport parking garage.

At a meeting Monday of the City Council's Finance Committee, First Deputy Budget Director Russ Carlson acknowledged that a payment plan is in the works and that City Hall hopes to have it ready within a month after all of the details and eligibility guidelines are worked out.

Tentative plans call for the program to be open to those motorists, regardless of income, who are eligible for the boot, but have not yet had their cars disabled by city crews.

Motorists whose cars have already been booted also would be eligible, but only if they meet certain hardship criteria, like the low-income levels eligible to qualify for so-called Circuit Breaker property tax relief and help paying winter heating bills.

Drivers who agree to abide by a payment plan, only to default would have their vehicles booted immediately. And they would be barred from ever participating again.

"We'd like this done as soon as possible. . . . Twenty-five percent of all cars that are booted are either sold or destroyed by the city because the owners, for one reason or another, have not recovered them. I suspect it's because they couldn't afford to," Shiller said.

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