Parking ticket writing drops again, while booting rises
Chicago is continuing to write fewer and fewer parking tickets while making even greater use of the wheel- locking Denver boot, aldermen were told Monday.
Booting was up 11 percent during the first six months of 2017, as city crews disabled 33,836 vehicles — a rate of 5,639 boots per month. That’s compared to 5,078 boots per month during 2016, when booting was up 10 percent.
While booting continued its steady rise, parking ticket writing continued to go in the opposite direction.
Last year, ticketing was down by 5 percent. Through June 30 of this year, ticket totals were down by another 4 percent.
Chicago issued 2.25 million tickets during all of last year. Through the first six months of this year, there were 1.1 million tickets written. At that rate, the city would fall 48,763 tickets short of last year’s total.
City boot crews work from a list that includes more than 500,000 eligible license plates, many registered to motorists who live outside the city.
The 11 percent booting surge continues a windfall for the city on the heels of Emanuel’s decision to raise the booting fee a fewyears ago from $ 60 to $ 100 and set the stage to give scofflaws the long- awaited opportunity to remove their own wheel- locking Denver boots instead of waiting for city crews to arrive.
The Near West Side’s booming 27thWardwas home to 1,600 boot scofflaws, tops in the city. That was followed by the 3rd Ward ( 1,245 boots); the 28th Ward ( 1,108); the 4th Ward ( 1,007) and the 41st Ward that includes O’Hare International Airport ( 992).
Otherwards home to large numbers of booted motorists were: the 6th ( 987); the 5th ( 984); the 21st ( 973); the 20th ( 969); the 29th ( 952); the 37th ( 928); the 8th ( 912) and the 1st ( 887).
Not surprisingly, the ward where the greatest number of parking tickets were written was the downtown’s 42nd, with 117,792 during the first six months of this year.
The next highest wards for parking tickets are: the 44th, which includes Wrigley Field ( 52,826); the downtown’s 2nd Ward ( 49,155); the 27th ( 48,461); the 25th ( 47,988); and the 1st ( 40,354).
The ward- by- ward breakdown of booting and ticketing was distributed to aldermen on opening day of City Council’s hearings onMayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2018 budget.
Ald. George Cardenas ( 12th), former chairman of the City Council’s Hispanic Caucus, argued that “everybody is feeling the pain” of the declining parking ticket blitz “unless you’re the 19th Ward, and 38 and 41 — and I think we may know why that happens.”
Cardenas was referring to the large number of police officers who live in those wards.
“And then you get to the boots placed on because of those tickets. If you look at the wards again who are bearing the brunt of this, mostly South Side, West Side and Hispanic areas. People can’t afford to pay, not only the tickets but the boot,” Cardenas said.
Molly Poppe, a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, was asked why booting and ticketing continue to go in opposite directions.
“The milder 2017 winter is helping to drive the increase in booting recently. And while the Department of Finance is up 2.6% in ticketing, the Chicago Police Department has decreased its administrative ticket writing,” she wrote in an email.