Honolulu City Councilmembers are exploring the idea of using vehicle boots to clamp down on car owners who’ve racked up parking violations.
There’s a bill before the City Council that would establish a vehicle boot program.
It’s similar to what you may have seen in cities on the mainland.
You could soon see these devices attached to vehicles if Honolulu City Council Bill 5 becomes law.
Councilman Ikaika Anderson introduced the measure.
"What the purpose of this bill is to encourage people to get current with their motor vehicle violations as well as to pay their motor vehicle registration fees, which some folks aren’t doing," said Anderson.
The device is called a vehicle boot.
It’s clamped on the wheel, and prevents a car from moving.
It’s a means to curb unpaid parking tickets and unpaid vehicle registration fees — a huge problem.
"It’s a problem that has generated $13.5M -$40M of uncollected fines," said Anderson.
If you haven’t paid one parking ticket, or two or three, you probably won’t find one of these attached to your car.
Anderson says they’re really trying to target the car owners who’ve racked up huge bills.
"We haven’t exactly set what the threshold will be, but my thinking is set a dollar amount, say at $1000. And if you have $1000 racked up of unpaid vehicle violations then the police department in the affected county would be able to boot the vehicle," said Anderson.
Former Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou introduced a similar bill in 2008.
"I’m not exactly sure why it didn’t go through back then but it did become apparent to my office that we would have to ask the state legislature to change certain state laws to allow the counties to enact a smart boot program," said Anderson.
A bill moving through the State Legislature would authorize all of the counties in Hawaii, not just Honolulu, to implement a vehicle boot program.
"It would cost the city roughly $1M to start this program up. We envision a cost sharing mechanism with the State where the City pays to implement the program, the State collects the proceeds and then the state shares in those proceeds with the counties," said Anderson.
The City Council’s Transportation Committee is scheduled to hear the bill on Thursday at 1pm.
See the original article at: KHON2 Developing Stories
