Two Ticket Booting Kicks In Soon

Officially, when the most recent parking ticket amnesty program ended on February 14th, the threshold for having your vehicle booted dropped from three unpaid tickets in final determination, to only two tickets older than one year.

But in reality, according to Dept. of Revenue spokesperson Ed Walsh, you’re not going automatically going to be booted tomorrow for having two unpaid tickets.

“It will be a little while,” said Walsh. “It will be a few weeks away because we must fulfill notice requirements.”

Walsh explained that the city must first send out Seizure Notices to all the motorists who had been sitting at two unpaid tickets in Final Determination in which both are older than one year.

This Seizure Notice gives the vehicle owner 21 days to either fight the notice and/or pay their outstanding tickets. Only when the vehicle owner’s hearing rights are exhausted, can you be booted.

“Our perspective is a fairness issue,” says Walsh. “A lot of people were having at two tickets because they knew they couldn’t be booted.

The city did extremely well with the ticket amnesty program, raking in $7 million dollars over the 10 weeks, which removed approximately 135,000 parking and red light tickets from Chicago’s books.

When the amnesty program began this past December, approximately 170,000 vehicles fell into that two unpaid ticket category. Many of those 170,000 vehicle owners came into compliance over the amnesty period, according to Walsh.

Obviously, there are still a lot, over 100,000, vehicles that will now will have to be fearful of the Denver Boot.

Walsh believes all these new Seizure Notices will go out sometime this month and booting will begin sometime in April.

But just because more vehicles are boot eligible, does not necessarily mean the total number of  booted vehicles will rise significantly according to Walsh. There are no plans for additional boot vans or increased man hours of boot enforcement.

“We may see some boot increases,” Walsh said. “Hopefully, we’ll see more people come into compliance before they are booted. Inspiring people to pay their tickets before they are booted is the goal.”

IMPORTANT GEEK NOTE: Remember, in order to be eligible for two ticket booting, you must have two unpaid tickets in Final Determination OLDER than one year.

If you have only two unpaid tickets in Final Determination less than 12 months old, you cannot be booted unless you have three tickets in Final Determination status.

But, once those two tickets are more than a year old, you’ll be getting a nice letter (Seizure Notice), kindly explaining NOW you are boot eligible and giving you 21 days to pay up.