Naperville seeks input on higher parking fines

Naperville City Council members are seeking input from residents and commuters as they wrestle with a proposed 67 percent increase in parking fines. The proposed fine structure discussed Tuesday night would raise the minimum parking violation from $30 to $50 and the minimum compromise payment from $15 to $25. Residents can pay the lower “compromise” amount if they have fewer than 12 unpaid parking tickets in a year and pay the fine within 15 days.

Council members delayed action on the proposal until their Dec. 6 meeting.

In the meantime, they hope to hear from as many people as possible about the proposed increases that would generate roughly $150,000 a year in new revenue for the city.

The most common violators, officials say, are commuters who don’t pay while parking in daily use spots at the city’s train stations. Many of those commuters would rather pay a $15 ticket than the $20 to $40 it costs to park in Chicago.

Police say they also frequently issue tickets to motorists who illegally park on Naperville streets between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.

Councilman Robert Fieseler said he sees the need to discourage people from piling up parking tickets, but the proposed increase in fines “strikes me as high.”

“I see the reason to charge enough to discourage on-street parking, but I don’t want to discourage people from using vacant spots (at the train depots) even if they get dinged this way,” he said.

Councilman Grant Wehrli told of a gold, Mercedes SUV that would routinely cruise Center Street for on-street parking, when he lived in the historic district near Naperville’s Fifth Avenue station.

“(The driver) would park for more than four hours, get a ticket and leave them on the seat,” Wehrli said. “There are people that look at this and go ‘Fifteen bucks, aah, by the time I get to the city and park there, I’m out 40 bucks anyway, I’ll just take the $15 hit.’”

“I understand we need to raise (the fines) but I think this is a bit too much,” Councilman Joe McElroy said. “We need to look at the economic development view. At what point does it get to be so high that people begin second-guessing whether or not they want to come back here?”