JERSEY CITY – The Jersey City Council will tomorrow consider an ordinance that would allow police officers to boot and tow vehicles registered to drivers who have failed to pay three or more tickets. If approved, the measure would increase the number of boots placed on vehicles during the late evening hours.
Currently, the chore of ticketing illegally parked cars and booting scofflaws falls under the purview of the Jersey City Parking Authority, whose officers rarely boot vehicles after 5 or 6 p.m.
But in an email to Councilman Steve Fulop that was obtained by the Reporter, Parking Authority Director Mary Spinello wrote: “It will cost me money in the long run and I agree it will be a nightmare. We have made major strides in how we manage the booting program, especially with the scofflaw program.
It’s going to cost the [Police Department] $4,000 per night to assign manpower to this, that’s the cost of two cops per district (salary plus benefits). That means they have to generate a minimum of $4,000 in scofflaw [payments] per night just to cover the cost of the manpower.”
Spinello added that, “Continuing to utilize [Jersey City Parking Authority] personnel – who on average make $35,000 annually, and whose primary function is ticketing and booting – to address scofflaws is more cost effective than deploying $100,000 police officers to do the job. We are getting approx 25-plus cars, per day, working off written lists just going out and finding cars.”
Fulop, who opposes the ordinance, has asked that it be pulled from the council’s June 29 agenda.