Description
The City booted a car at 4:55 pm yesterday for a back parking ticket. The woman who owned the car tried to pay it the next morning at 9 am, but they'd towed her car already, at 5 am. I think the 12 hour policy makes sense, but if City Hall closes at 5 pm, how can someone pay their parking ticket in time?
It's a pretty obvious scam. The woman now owes a parking ticket in addition, and her wallet was in the car, so she has to borrow the money to pay for it.
Why does the City of New Haven practice such a regressive, punitive practice? Why is the City treating residents like an ATM?
This is the same type of behavior singled out by the DOJ in their Ferguson report on how the Ferguson police treated residents like ATMs. New Haven needs to do better.
8 Comments
Closed David Streever (Registered User)
Reopened Abuse by City government policies (Guest)
guest (Guest)
Manager of Operations, Process Improvement - Transportation, Traffic, & Parking (Verified Official)
Thank you for the post, we encourage dialogue and welcome the opportunity to improve through your feedback. We'd like to take a moment to address your concerns. We understand that receiving parking tickets is a frustrating experience. However, parking citations are the result of failure to pay a parking meter, over staying a posted time limit that is vital to the turnover of high demand parking spaces which is crucial in business districts, parking illegally and often times jeopardizing the safety of the public. If someone parks illegally, receives a citation, neglects to pay the original fee or appeal the ticket through the appropriate channels within the first 15 days of issuance, late fees will accrue and this can lead to the booting and towing of the vehicle. This is a fairly standard rubric for municipalities of comparable size to New Haven. New Haven also charges among the least in the dollar amount of the majority of their parking citation fees in the state of CT compared to said municipalities. Further, New Haven has converted the majority of its metered spaces to credit card accepting meters and has employed the use of the Park Mobile payment app which will work on all meters city wide, offering residents and visitors multiple options where for decades prior small change was necessary. Regardless, when unaddressed tickets accumulate and late notices are ignored the city has to resort to booting and sometimes towing a vehicle. When a boot/wheel immobilizer is applied documentation is left affixed to the vehicle answering the questions you outline in your post. Beyond information regarding paying at City Hall during normal business hours, the documentation left on the vehicle at the time of booting clearly states “Cash & credit card payments can be made at Crown Auto Center 388 Crown St New Haven, CT Monday – Friday 6pm – 8am and all day Saturday and Sunday”, as well as “Failure to make payment within 12 hours of your vehicle being wheel immobilized will result in your vehicle being towed at an additional cost of $77.00”. In the event of a vehicle being towed to Crown, when the owner of the vehicle goes to Crown with the intention of paying and they’ve left their wallet inside of the car Crown staff will retrieve the wallet with the person present to facilitate the payment and release of the vehicle.
Another tool we now provide the residents and visitors of New Haven is the New Haven Connect App(http://newhavenconnect.com/). In the past six months we changed our payment processing provider, which has helped us improve efficiencies and has seen an increase in payments via mobile devices. The website service we use to pay tickets is now mobile friendly and can be easily be accessed through New Haven Connect. Recently we have seen online payments overtake walk-in payments in terms of dollars, and we are looking to create a marketing campaign to promote New Haven Connect in the coming fiscal year - which is months. The implementation of this will greatly increase the ease of meter payment and avoidance of parking citations.
On a personal note, regarding the accusations of corruption & regression, although I disagree with your assessment of our practices I will not suggest that this or any aspect of municipal government is without room for improvement. However I do not believe that the policies in New Haven are incomparable to national standards for municipalities of similar size and population. The fact that I’m reading your critique of our practices and responding in this public forum is the result of our implementation of tools such as See Click Fix to better open dialogues with the public. Nearly all of our policies are a result of the enforcement of city ordinance, i.e. the law. I would encourage any fellow residents of New Haven who have practical suggestions on how to improve our policies to reach out to their Alder and request that the Board of Alders prioritize any viable revision. I would also encourage residents who are frequently receiving parking tickets to consider alternatives to avoid future citations such as the aforementioned meter payment alternatives, off street parking in the lots and garages that constitute 87% of parking in the downtown area alone, and most importantly public transit and multimodal transportation options such as bicycling. I along with a number of other city staff members ride my bicycle to work every day and enjoy never having to worry about parking tickets or motor vehicle property tax. I highly recommend it.
Stay #Connected on Mobile - Download the "New Haven Connect" app
http://onelink.to/9mq65z
Acknowledged Manager of Operations, Process Improvement - Transportation, Traffic, & Parking (Verified Official)
Hangin'AroundHere (Registered User)
*Stands and applauds the Evening Supervisor's comment!*
It really isn't hard to NOT get you car booted and towed. 1. Park Legally 2. Pay any fines for illegal parking (including expired meter) in a timely manner.
I personally love the ParkMobile app for parking around town. The up charge for its usage is well worth it for stress-free parking.
What I can't wrap my head around is why the heck would you leave your purse/wallet inside a car that had been booted?
neighbor9 (Registered User)
Closed Transportation, Traffic & Parking Department - Daytime Parking Enforcement Supervisor (Verified Official)