City Council Inches Closer Toward an Ordinance Allowing Parking Lot Booting

By Robert Wilonsky Sun., May 24 2009 at 12:17 PM

Categories: News

The issue of private parking lot operators slapping boots on cars has been an issue the city council's been wrestling with for much of the year, following news that Deep Ellum patrons were getting the clampdown even after paying. The council's hoping to get something done before it takes its summer break, which is why Tuesday's meeting of the Transportation and Environment Committee will feature what's sure to be a lengthy discussion on the matter -- the PowerPoint presentation alone runs 50 pages, including several pages' worth of testimony from an April 20 public hearing during which parking lot operators squared off against Deep Ellum business and property owners and plain ol' patrons who claimed "this booting is hurting us bad," in the words of Angry Dog owner John Little.

"Customers are mad because they paid $100 to park, and they are blaming me," Little told the panel. "They are trashing our restaurant. ... We're getting killed." Jonathan Hetzel of Madison Partners insisted, "I have seen with my own eyes homeless people go up and fish in the pay boxes and pull out money." Twisted Root's Jason Bosso said, "Customers are saying they will never come back after paying $100 to eat a $10 hamburger. These guys are biting the hands that feed them." To which a Star Parking rep insisted, "We use discretion, much like a first-grade teacher. After being in the business, you can tell is someone is guilty or not guilty."

Yes, but how? That's the issue with which the council is wrestling, as most parking lots don't provide drivers with proof they paid up -- like, say, a paper receipt. And parking lot operators don't want to fork over the money for electronic pay stations that would kick out a proper receipt; they claim it's not financially feasible, especially on the smaller lots.

Which is why the city is leaning toward allowing booting after all, with some restrictions on parking lot operators and their boot-providing buddies: Pages 22 through 26 of the briefing documents outline a proposed ordinance that would add the new Chapter 48C to the Dallas City Code: "Vehicle Immobilization (Booting) Service Ordinance." The ordinance would allow the option to boot or tow, regulate who can boot (any company whose employees pass a criminal background check, more or less, and any individual who forks over an annual $10 permit fee), how much it'll cost patrons ($100 max), and offers further guidelines worth a peek before you park. We'll have more later this week as the committee takes up the ordinance before it goes to the council, perhaps as soon as June 10.

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"Never Parking in A Pay Lot Again" - this is Tracy from Pearl, please contact me at info@pearlatcommerce.com <a href="http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2010/jan/02/how-combat-parking-lot-fraud/">I actually documented the events of that night here </a> I would like to get some info from you, we are at war. We have a FB page set up to document incidents too, there is a link to it on the pegasus news page linked above. Please everyone, if you have been ripped off by these thugs, please help us document it!!!
Tonight I went to see a friend's band play their very first set at Pearl at Commerce. I made sure to pay immediately after getting out of my car after having heard many horror stories about parking in downtown and deep ellum. Well, needless to say, I got booted. In fact, at least 6 other people I know of did, too, in the same lot! One guy even had video of himself walking from his car and putting the money into the box. So I called the cops. And unfortunately they are powerless to do anything to these people. It's my word versus theirs, so it's a civil matter. Nothing they could do. But, as I stood there waiting, I made sure to tell the 10 cars I saw pulling in the lot to park on the street and feed the city meters. Take money from my pockets, I will gladly return the favor. What's worse is that the sticker on my car windshield said 8:54 pm. The video shown to us by the booters when they looked in the box was 8:55 PM! Uuhhhh, helloooo?!?!? How can you boot my car before even looking in the (*Q&#$)(*&Q# BOX??!?!? So gee, lemme think, why not move the money before opening up the box on all the nice cars in the lot. (which is surely what it looked like!) In the end, all of us had to pay up so we could go home. And none of us will ever be paying to park in those lots again. Doubtful if any of us will be returning to the area either. I really feel bad for any business owners in deep ellum and downtown. They have no parking of their own and they are at the mercy of pay meters and these lot owners. The owners of Pearl at Commerce were great folks, very warm and friendly. This issue has hurt them badly and will continue to do so. I just wish I could have seen my friend's first ever set instead of having to wait for the cops and the booters. All I got was the last song...
Boot illegally and get killed. Period. We are sick of this shit. We won't get caught either. Watch your backs Hawkeye Parking Enforcement employees, your life is not worth the scam, and if you attempt it again, YOU WILL BE KILLED.
Texas law (the Occupation Code) provides a $1000 penalty plus triple the boot fee for any illegal vehicle booting incident. (per www.BootandTow.com). Yes it is an option for the city of Dallas to put in place an ordinance, but the terms of this law can only serve to reinforce the existing state law; Dallas' law cannot reduce the requirements already put in place. Looking forward to something being done about these parasitic booting scoundrels!
I was booted tonight after paying the parking lot attendant $10 to park off of Malcom X and Main. I have the ticket to prove I paid but Hawkeye Parking Enforcement told me I could have gotten the parking voucher from anywhere. If this is the case then who can we trust to pay?! My parking voucher states "This ticket licences the holder to park one automobile in this area at holder's risk." If I have a ticket issued by Star Parking stating I have payed to park there, how can they legally boot my truck?? This is the reason people do not come to Deep Ellum anymore and it will only get worse until the city of Dallas either takes a hint from Fort Worth or Deep Ellum goes under all together. Way to go Dallas, you just lost another customer.
Wait six months and take the train. Problem solved.
@ JohnM and others: As I read the powerpoint presentation, the proposed city ordinance is going to require the issuance of a receipt, either by an attendant or by an electronic machine. That single requirement will provide a great deal of relief to those who are now being victimized by the parking lot "enforcers." @ DeepEllum: Hanging a camera is neither that cheap nor that effective. You can't get a clear enough shot of the pay box (you are necessarily at some distance from it). Also, reviewing the video can be an arduous process, particularly if an employee (as opposed to a customer) gets booted at some point during a long shift.
Here's a crazy idea, walk. The wife and I do it quite often. Wacky
OMG, Not Feasible! I was in South Beach about a month ago and I LOVED the pay meter. I just paid with my debit card the amount of time I wanted ($5.00 max) and put the receipt on my dash so it was viewable from the front. It was GREAT! I was only 2 blocks from Ocean Dr and walked to the beach and bars!
We go to Angry Dog about twice a month and always feed the meter on the street. Much cheaper than finding a boot on my car.
JF has hit the nail on its head. We can talk about boots all day long; the fact is most everyone is out there to screw you over. Whether it be apartment complexes, parking lot attendants or ice cream vendors. I've considered staring a non-profit legal service just for the these sort of under-the-radar schemes. Its just not enough money to get anyone too excited about .. unless you are a city employee that is; owning some parking lots is just a kicker.
The idea that this would pass seems pretty absurd. If it's too expensive to offer paying customers proof of purchase, you should not have the right to boot. That seems incredibly simple. This will get ugly very fast. A business model where the incentives favor cheating your customers will always turn out that way. When you leave an apartment complex, there are always a few hundred dollars of repairs that they charge. Why? Because honest tenants don't want to deal with the apartment sending the bill to collections while they protest it. Meanwhile, hiring a lawyer to fight it will cost more than the fine itself. Same with the boot. It's enough to where you probably won't go to court to fight it (and if you did, what would you do, tell the judge you''re an honest person?), but you will be really really annoyed. The difference is the collateral damage. It would be hard to convey your dissatisfaction to future renters, but it's easy to stop eating at the Twisted Root and Cowboy Chow (much as I love them both).
I agree cujo, the city of dallas, when enforcing its own regulations w/ parking lot owners and tow companies, is a "one step forward, two steps back mentality". Alot of this is due to the "good ol' boy" mentality that still permeates city hall and dallas city government as a whole, as there are both current and ex council members who either own or co-own lots around town. If we're going to be a decent city, we need a city government who needs to get seriously involved in protecting its citizens rights. Right now, we dont have that and until we do, expect Dallas to be a second-tier city when it comes to the way business is allowed to trample on the rights of the citizen.
The problem is that there are no controls to prevent abuse. If I owned a lot and were to boot cars in my parking lot for fun and profit, I'd certainly not waste my time booting a 1970 Maverick and would much rather boot your brand new Beemer. If you put money into the box, so what? I can just claim you didn't or switch that money to another slot if I didn't elect to simply put it in my pocket. Crooked owners, employees or contractors can say whatever they damned well please and the driver who parked his car there is automatically guilty? That's the essence of what's going on here. I don't have an axe to grind, I've not been nailed by these guys but that's because I've been warned. I am staying away from the area until there's something to protect me from this kind of abuse.
Excellent idea. Combine that with a clause in the parking lease contract by the landowner that a parking company cannot employ boots if they do not issue receipts for parking payment.
A simple solution to me would be to allow booting ONLY if they parking lot operator provided an e-pay station. Seems like if illegal parking was really a problem that the booting revenue would quickly make up for the e-pay station cost.
Another solution is for property owners to insert into the land lease to the parking lot operators, a clause forbiding the booting and/or towing of vehicles.
I frequent one club in the area that has a sign on their front door stating that they do not recommend their patrons park with Star. Maybe all the establishments that are worried about this turn of events should work with and recommend operators who will not boot, thus putting financial hardship on those that do boot. And, geez, how much do these hand held receipt printers actually cost? They have them all over third world countries. Star just doesn't want to shell out the money, they would rather rip people off.
We had the time of our lives a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night in Ft. Worth (stockyards district). And we live 5 min west of downtown Dallas. We wouldn't hesitate to go back to FTW for entertainment, especially since Dallas (city of) is so intent on jacking things up for it's citizens, they may as well say goodbye to the money that's not going to get spent (in Dallas).
The restaurants should hang a $100 wireless DVR camera on the side of the building pointed at the money collector box, and record it to their existing computer. Real cheap and an immediate fix. When there is an altercation, the patron can have the manager roll back the video. If a bum is observed fishing money out of the box, it voids any boots that night. I think what people are upset about is that they end up having a bad experience when the parking company did not provide adequate security for the box. That is not the fault of the patron. Have the council notify the police that, if called (and the video shows a bum fishing, the boot comes off no charge. Same for the municipal courts if it gets that far. And the parking companies are liable for court costs and attorney fees if there is a video indicating the box was tampered with. Bottom line - if parking cos. want to charge for parking, then they must exert positive control over the collection boxes. Otherwise, don't be out there trying to make easy money and demanding that the buyer beware.
Call this the Dallas bailout plan for tow truck drivers since the State Fair cash cow was slaughtered. Maybe the Star Parking rep can help out with Guantanamo determinations. Since Star can't even hire attendants capable of handing out paper receipts (for some reason not as much of a problem in Fair Park), I'm thinking they don't know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to judging car owner guilt/innocence. When citizens have to study more than two guidelines before parking in a neighborhood then it's apparent the city doesn't want them there. If the current residents get screwed out of $$$, well the city's gotta make up their deficit by all means necessary. Once again, Dallas, thanks for nothing.
The condo boom is over with. One good thing is that Beck's development deal fell through in Deep Ellum. Another is that the city government continues to overlook Deep El. The result is that a) rents have not risen like they have in other parts of the city, b) the ownership is stable and has been around long enough to where they are not highly leveraged (don�t owe anything on the rental properties), and c) can therefore drop rents as the markets soften and won�t go into foreclosure. Because of this dynamic, we are stronger than Highland Park. Another real cool deal is that empty nesters can easily convert these 1,500 to 2,500 sq.ft. retail store fronts into live/work domiciles cheaply. And right now, it makes more sense to rent than to buy. One thing that kinda hurts but we�re still okay with it, is that the bar SUPs now required take a very long time to get and are iffy at best. I have seen three different small business entrepreneurs lease space, pay on it for over a year, then abandon the space due to the loss of inertia, permit disapproval, or it just took too long and they ran out of money. Entertainment venues can typically pay higher rents and stay longer than other types of mom-n-pop operations, or local artists (galleries). But overall, Deep Ellum is the best small town in Dallas. It will weather the coming Depression very well due to its location abutting the Baylor Hospital District, two DART Light Rail substations opening in September, the manner in which the properties are locally owned (including Westdale), and the general stick-togetherness of the daytime crowd. Deep Ellum is going to be (and is right now) a net gainer in the city�s war of neglect.
Let me get this right: I want to eat at Twisted Root, and because the city has decided to up all the parking meter rates I decide to park in the pay parking lot, put my money in, go in to eat, come out and there's a boot on my car and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it? Since I can't prove I put my money in, the lot owners don't even have to blame vagrants or anyone else - they can just say "Hey, there's no money in your slot" and they make an extra $100 or so off of me? Is the City Council trying to destroy what is left of Deep Ellum on purpose? I hate to say it again, as has everyone else, Fort Worth knows how to run an entertainment district. Our council members don't need to take junkets to Seattle or Austin or anywhere else to "get ideas", just drive over to Fort Worth and learn what works. Has anyone had city hall run the numbers to see what free parking would do to increased sales, with increased taxes paid?
Its got me thinking about moving. Seeing our heroes on the city council seem to be more concerned about siding with parking lot owners than doing the right thing and eliminating this type of "illegal" fining. If it happends, expect me and others to be down at the lots w/ our power tools cutting off these boots.
Thank goodness Twisted Root has opened in Richardson. Just need to get Angry Dog & All Good Cafe to move North too. Its all about CONVENIENCE of which the Deep Ellum neighborhood is lacking
I guess you will be happy when soneone is killed over their car being booted. The people that will come inot Dallas will go to Frisco unstead. People wake up you are killing the goose that layed the golden egg.
Great! Let's put every entertainment zone out of business and build more condos. The blandification of Dallas continues!
Once again the city of Dallas sides with the money and not it's citizens. Thanks guys.
ok so an e-pay station isn't profitable for a small lot, but why not put them in at the larger lots? i've been in numerous cities around the world and many have pay stations that spit out receipts that one sticks on the inside of the car seems to me that there could be some way to use ATM technology to accept debit/credit cards for the parking lots especially since the lots staffing costs would go down substantially since no one has drive around collecting cash