Grace Period For City Stickers To End In 2016

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 28, 2014 2:50PM

Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza (Photo credit: Patrick L. Pyszka/City of Chicago)

The Chicago City Clerk Office’s move to year-round sales of city stickers for motor vehicles means the customary two-week grace period to buy a new one every year will go the way of the Edsel, the DeLorean and the city sticker art contest.

City Clerk Susana Mendoza said Wednesday the grace period will end in 2016 now that the year-round sales of city stickers are set to begin. Under the new staggered sales system city stickers will expire six months after the sticker on a vehicle’s state license plate. Starting in June the Clerk’s office will offer car owners the option of buying a sticker that will cover them until they have to buy a replacement or they can buy a replacement sticker that covers those months and another year. All this is intended to get the new system on track for 2016.

Because stickers will be available year-round and tied to the expiration of a vehicle’s license plate sticker, Mendoza said the wait lines common for city stickers should become a thing of the past.

“For years...people would come to the Clerk's Office on their lunch break thinking 'I'm going to buy my city sticker,' and it ended up being an hour-and-a-half, two-hour wait,” Mendoza said. “So people would literally leave, say 'I didn't have the ability, there just wasn't enough time to come into compliance during a very short window of time.' That's going to disappear, so the historical need to have (the grace period) is gone.”

The City Council License Committee endorsed a plan Wednesday to make the 15-day grace period official for 2014 and 2015. Beginning in 2016, drivers will have 30 days to buy new stickers online or in person before incurring late fees. If motorists still don’t buy a new sticker, they’re subject to $60 late fees and could receive $200 tickets for having an expired sticker.