Credit: The Stranger
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  • Goldy | The Stranger

Here’s a tip to Seattle scofflaws with four or more unpaid tickets: you might not want to be so cavalier about parking your car anywhere on downtown city streets these days, let alone a half block from the East Precinct.

The poor shmo belonging to the car on the right is bound to be awfully disappointed when he comes back to discover a bright, yellow boot attached to his right-front wheel, along with the $145 boot fee that goes with it. Even worse, if he doesn’t pay in full or come to payment terms within 48 hours, his car may be towed and impounded, accumulating even more fees. Fifteen days after that, it could even be sold at auction. Yikes.

FYI, the entire boot fee goes to for-profit boot vendor, PayLock. Hear that Tim Eyman, our great defender of scofflaws, speedsters, and red-light-runners everywhere? Here’s an opportunity for you to get outraged—OUTRAGED, I tell you!—at yet another, municipal, money-making scheme!

Or, you know, people could just pay their fucking parking tickets. (Through July 15 the city is waiving all late fees and interest, so get moving before you get the boot.)

19 replies on “Seattle Scofflaws Get the Boot”

  2. I’d let the devil herself have the boot fee if that meant the city could recoup the $25 million owed just by the bootable “scofflaws” in parking tickets. That’d go a long way to patch up the budget shortfall. Of course, I haven’t had a car since I was a teenager, so easy for me to say.

  4. I get that it makes people pay tickets so the gov’t gets some money, but I’m sure you could get a cut of that boot fee guys. C’mon. It’s like you’re not even trying anymore.

  5. They say the police are “the gang with the badges”. In that spirit I propose that we deputize car thieves, give them a list of “scofflaw” offender cars, and send them out to steal all the offending cars. Result: the city gets its money and a group of car thieves are diverted to socially beneficial work.

  7. Parking tickets are the most regressive of taxation. You create a car-centric culture, then punish people for trying to use their cars; you call them scofflaws but there just isn’t enough room in a city environment for everyone to drive, and people gotta get places sometimes. Unpaid parking tickets are the absolutely logical and inevitable consequence of punitive taxation.

    I’m not saying no one deserves parking tickets – although I am pretty well convinced that only offenses which merit towing anyway are really worth ticketing, making the act of simple ticketing redundant. I am definitely saying that as a system, parking enforcement is broken and stupid.

  8. If I get booted at 2:45 p.m. downtown on Second Ave., where the Tow Away zone begins at 3:00 p.m. — I guess I’m REALLY screwed….

  9. @1, @3, @6 — because it’s totally smart to exchange a few dollars’ worth of parking ticket money for a warrant for your arrest.

    PARK LEGALLY. PAY YOUR TICKETS.

  10. For once, I agree with Goldy. Pay your fucking tickets (or don’t get them in the first place – it ain’t that hard) and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

  11. @7 Oh come on. Parking legally is not that big of a challenge. I drive everywhere, hate paying for lots, and am downtown frequently and have gotten like 4 tickets in my life.

    Its not that hard.

  12. @7, @11: Related point. If you get a ticket, you pay it. Failing that, you get a second ticket, and you pay them. Failing that, third time’s the charm, right? No, okay, fourth ticket, you haven’t paid that one, now you get the boot.

    (Although I agree there’s a likelihood that people with lower incomes are more likely to run into both issues with finding affordable parking and paying fines in the pursuit of jobs that give them little flexibility. Still.)

  13. @12 If you can’t afford to pay your parking tickets, you might as well sell your car now and beat them to the punch… because you’re sure as hell not going to be able to pay your parking tickets, plus the boot fee, plus the impound fee to prevent your car from going to auction.

  14. My boyfriend got the boot today while parked perfectly legally at work. You don’t have to be set to get another ticket, folks. They are on the hunt. Pay your tickets.

  16. People whose only home is their car are going to suffer a lot more from this than people who live in houses and have an income. Think about those people when you say “just pay your tickets”.

  17. Ick, Goldy, only your dickish attitude could give me momentary (now evaporated) sympathy for ticket accumulators.

  18. I watched a gazillion episodes of Parking Wars last week via Netflix streaming. Hilarious show. I hope we get a season shot in Seattle. Boot ’em and film ’em.

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