WICKER PARK — Chicago City Clerk Anna M. Valencia will meet with residents on Monday to discuss the city’s policies for issuing fines and fees related to towing, city sticker tickets, car boots and payment plans.
Residents can talk with Valencia from 1-2 p.m. at the Bucktown/Wicker Park Library, at 1701 N. Milwaukee Ave.
According to the city clerk’s website, the Fines, Fees & Access Collaborative is working toward creating a comprehensive review of the city’s fines, fees and collection practices.
The collaborative is comprised of community leaders, advocates, neighborhood organizations, academics, aldermen and city departments. The group will evaluate problems with the current systems and propose solutions and reforms, according to the website.
ProPublica Illinois, in partnership with WBEZ, obtained and published a database containing more than 54 million parking, standing and vehicle compliance tickets issued since 1996.
Ticket debt piles up disproportionately in the city’s low-income, mostly black neighborhoods — eight of the 10 ZIP codes with the most accumulated ticket debt per adult are majority black, according to a ProPublica Illinois analysis of ticket data since 2007 and figures from the U.S. Census.
A Block Club Chicago analysis of the database found wards with heavy police and fire department populations saw the least number of parking tickets issued.
According to the database, the 1st Ward owed $34.8 million in total debt from tickets issued between Jan. 1, 1996 and May 14, 2018.
The ward was issued 392,000 tickets between Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2017 — ranked No. 5 across all 50 wards.
To learn about what parking ticket data looks like in your ward, enter your address into ProPublica’s database.
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