Leaders of a northeast Iowa city have decided to get tougher on people who don’t pay their parking tickets. Dubuque’s city council is enacting a new policy for motorists who ignore those pesky citations on their windshields. Randy Gehl, Dubuque’s public information officer, explains how it’ll work.
Gehl says, "As soon as you have three parking tickets that are older than 30 days, that vehicle license plate number goes on the tow list and at that point, after July 1, the vehicle could be towed and impounded." Dubuque resident Randi Rusk says she has seven over-due parking tickets right now and fears she’ll be racking more of them up.
Rusk says, "Everywhere that I park, there’s a meter. Sometimes I’ll get three (tickets) a day. Some of the meters are only an hour and some of my meetings run over an hour." She says the city’s policy change on parking tickets will force her to pay closer attention to the time of day — and the time on her meter.
Rusk says, "I’ll have to take a weekly trip to city hall to make sure I’m not on the tow list, if that’s what happens." The new policy takes effect July 1st. Dubuque’s current policy says if a car owner has five or more parking tickets older than seven days, the city will put you on its list of cars to tow away. City officials say when the new ordinance takes effect, the number of cars on the tow list will jump from about 200 now to almost 750.