‘Denver Boot’: Parking Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Los Angeles parking enforcement officials,two city councilmen and a host of news reporters and photographers swooped down on Poinsettia Place in Hollywood on Thursday for the formal unveiling of the city’s “Denver boot” program.

The object of attention was the boot--an orange iron vise that will be clamped at the rate of 50 to 60 a day on the left front wheel of vehicles discovered by enforcement personnel to have five or more unpaid parking tickets.

About 65,000 scofflaws owe the city a total of $28.7 million, officials said. Parking fines account for about $50 million in revenue for the city each year.

Dirty White Subaru

A dirty white 1986 Subaru was the first recipient of the boot Thursday. Afterward, a bright orange sign reading “WARNING DO NOT MOVE THIS VEHICLE” in black letters was also put on the windshield, informing the presumed scofflaw that he had three days to pay off all his parking tickets before the car will be towed away to an impound.

The director of the city’s Department of Transportation, Donald Howery, added, with apparent delight, “They’d better not try to move it. One turn of the wheel and you flip off the left fender.”

According to parking control chief Ted Mirkov, the ceremony would have been held the day before, when more than 20 cars were booted as the program began, but Councilman Michael Woo, chairman of the City Council’s Transportation and Traffic Committee, asked for a one-day delay.

Mirkov said Woo wanted the boot officially unveiled when he could be there, and Wednesday was a council meeting day. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky also attended the booting ceremony.

A neighborhood resident dropped by for Thursday’s booting, inspected the Subaru and said he has frequently called to complain of illegal parking on both sides of Poinsettia Place, but that until Thursday, he had seldom seen the authorities enforce parking rules on the street.

Not so, said the officials. The Subaru had received all five of its parking tickets while illegally parked on Poinsettia, they said.

The tickets, Howery explained, originally totaled $128, but now, with penalties for nonpayment, the bill will be $300, plus a $35 fee to take off the boot. If the car has to be impounded, the retrieval fee will amount to at least $50.

The booting program rules, as outlined by Howery:

- No cars parked on private property will be booted.

- No cars will be booted outside the city limits, and the only unpaid tickets taken into account by the booters, in deciding whether to boot, will have been issued inside the city limits.

- Not every car ticketed will be checked against a list of scofflaws. Special enforcement groups will go into neighborhoods where scofflaws are believed to be parked in the largest numbers.

- To get the boots removed, motorists can pay their fines at three offices--634 S. Spring St., Room 320; 10716 Santa Monica Blvd., and 6309 Van Nuys Blvd., Room 103.

- Those who believe a mistake has been made in their cases will be entitled to appear at a post-seizure hearing. For such a hearing, they can phone (213) 623-6533, the same number as exists for vehicle release information, between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Friday.