The city expects a record $105 million in parking ticket fines next year, a figure that nevertheless reflects only a 60 percent collection rate on the 3.5 million citations projected to be issued, a top Daley administration official said Friday.
Despite the continuing problem of scofflaws, the rate represents a vast improvement, said Bea Reyna-Hickey, the city’s revenue director.
A decade ago, before improvements to the system, collections were in the 40 to 50 percent range, and Chicago’s record now stacks up well against other major cities, she said.
Ticket collection has become an increasingly important source of revenue. It totaled about $60 million four years ago, rising to an estimated $100 million for 2001.
Scofflaws in Chicago avoid enforcement until they accumulate five or more tickets. That’s when they go on a list making them eligible for the Denver boot.
At any given time, the city has 600,000 vehicles (or, in some cases, license plates that may no longer be in use) that are on the five-ticket-or-more scofflaw list, officials said. This year, about 40,000 cars have been booted.
Under a new link with the Illinois secretary of state’s office, people who retrieve their booted cars sometimes are faced with additional fines because the city now can track old plates issued to the owner on which there were unpaid tickets. .
But the city’s growing aggressiveness on the ticket collection front drew heat from some aldermen who questioned Reyna-Hickey at a committee meeting on Mayor Richard Daley’s proposed 2002 budget.
Ald. William Beavers (7th) said that some motorists who show up to retrieve their booted autos face bills of $2,000 or $3,000″ because the city “goes back as far as the beginning of time.”
Ald. Thomas Allen (38th) called for a “common-sense statute of limitations” on collections. Generally, the city seeks payment on tickets going back about a decade.
And Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) grilled Reyna-Hickey, contending that the Revenue Department targets African-American neighborhoods for enforcement.
Reyna-Hickey labeled Tillman’s charge “completely untrue.”
