Revisions to Houston's booting ordinance are designed to discourage parking lots from immediately booting a car if the rates change due to a special event.
Under the rules, set for a City Council debate Wednesday, a booting company may only charge $25 to remove the boot from a vehicle if the car's owner paid the parking lot fee before the rates jumped due to a special event. Such rates are common in parts of downtown near sporting and concert venues, such as Toyota Center.
"We don't want people coming in and booting cars just a few minutes after the rates change," said Houston City Council member Sue Lovell. "This is not supposed to be a 'gotcha' thing."
The City Council passed new rules for downtown surface lots in 2008, after an 11 News investigation revealed some people were posing as parking lot attendants and collecting money from drivers, even though they had no authority to do so. The drivers' cars were later towed, because they had never actually paid the parking lot for use of the space.
The new rules require consistent signage, lighting and procedures for surface lots, and require lot owners to issue printed receipts that drivers must display on their dashboards. If a car does not have a receipt, then the lots may "boot" the vehicle, and the driver must pay a fee of up to $100 to have the boot removed. The rules require a booting company to respond within an hour, and remove a boot within half an hour of receiving payment.
However, Lovell said, some booting companies aggressively boot vehicles as soon as evening rates take effect at some lots near special event venues. Whereas a driver might pay a daily rate of $4, she said, they might find their car booted as soon as a higher evening rate sets in.
"If it's within minutes of the violation, then I don't think people should be booted," she said.
The revisions to the ordinance would put the maximum charge to remove a boot under such a scenario at $25, far less than the $100 it would cost if a driver simply did not pay to park.
Joe Martin, who operates the parking lot enforcement company Equipark, said most lot owners allow drivers some time to move their cars after rates change. "Normally, there's a grace period that is self-imposed," he said. "The reality is, we're not treating people any different than they are being treated by the city of Houston when a parking meter expires."
