Recently my car was booted while legally parked on 3rd Ave. My wife, who had driven my car that day, discovered this after she left work at 5 p.m., and the parking office was closed.
We live 20 miles outside of town and the logistics of getting her home and back to town to recover the car were difficult.
It turns out the reason for the boot was that I had two outstanding parking tickets, one from November 2014 and the other December 2015. I got a notice this summer about the outstanding tickets, and living paycheck to paycheck, as most people do here, I was saving the money to cover them. I didn’t receive any notices prior to this summer.
Booting legally parked cars for unpaid parking tickets unfairly targets locals. I rarely go downtown, and given that the dates on my tickets were November and December the only reason I had to go there those days would have been holiday gift shopping.
I’ve tried to support local businesses since I moved here 11 years ago, but after dealing with the hassles of this parking boot, I will feel a lot less guilty when I do my holiday shopping online from the comfort of my living room from now on.
Wendy Haugen
Durango
