Results tagged “boot”

If you've got unpaid parking tickets, you'd better get to paying them off because the city is leveling the boot on motorists. Now that the limit for booting is two tickets more than one year old, the city is going all out in a bid to reclaim some cash with a $300 million budget hole looming. Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh gave the Sun-Times the lowdown: 415 boots already applied and more than 65,000 seizure notices mailed out. If you receive a seizure notice, you have 21 days to request a hearing or, yep, you get the boot. Acknowledging the economic clusterfuck that's hit everyone, the City is urging people on the list to consider payment plans or at least paying one of the tickets.

For the first time in six years, the City of Chicago is offering drivers an amnesty period to take care of old parking tickets before the boot threshold is lowered. The period runs from January 1 until February 14 during which tickets issued before January 1, 2007 can be paid off with 50 percent off the penalty fees. After the deadline, the threshold for booting drops from three unpaid tickets older than one year to two tickets. Revenue Director Bea Reyna-Hickey said, “I would encourage you to take advantage of this offer…We have not done one since 2002. Before that, there was one in the ‘80s. So it’s not something we want to do as a regular practice...It’s an opportunity for you to come into compliance [and] save a little money. I wish it could be more. But some people could really benefit from the waiver of those additional fees out there on their record.” As the number of tickets is down, Reyna-Hickey admitted, "Police [ticketing] has decreased…Clearly, the police have a lot of other more important things to tend to." In 2002, the last time an amnesty period was declared, the city brought in $8.2 million and took care of 242,000 unpaid tickets.

City council hearings began yesterday on Mayor Daley's newly-released 2009 city budget, and our aldermen don't seem to be very happy about many of its proposals. Daley's plan to slash police force hiring was a hotly contested item, as well as the scheme to boot cars after two tickets instead of three - a projected $48 million revenue generator.

A Department of Revenue employee was shot and wounded this morning while booting a car on the 8400 block of South Dante Ave. It's not clear if the shooter was also the car owner. The city employee was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious condition. [WBBM]