But it is the truth. What is wrong with calling out the City on their "independent contractors" practices. It is a less than fair tactic and needs to be addressed. If the women had paid her ticket she wouldn't have been in that mess, but that's no reason to keep on being financially punished repeatedly. Even the Court system doesn't allow you to be punished for the same crime twice. If you edit the paragraph it's a true statement. People work hard and let the punishment fit the crime.

welcome to Mayor Harp's New Haven, and to its citizenry as represented by David Streever.

Thank you for the post, we encourage dialogue and welcome the opportunity to improve through your feedback. We'd like to take a moment to address your concerns. We understand that receiving parking tickets is a frustrating experience. However, parking citations are the result of failure to pay a parking meter, over staying a posted time limit that is vital to the turnover of high demand parking spaces which is crucial in business districts, parking illegally and often times jeopardizing the safety of the public. If someone parks illegally, receives a citation, neglects to pay the original fee or appeal the ticket through the appropriate channels within the first 15 days of issuance, late fees will accrue and this can lead to the booting and towing of the vehicle. This is a fairly standard rubric for municipalities of comparable size to New Haven. New Haven also charges among the least in the dollar amount of the majority of their parking citation fees in the state of CT compared to said municipalities. Further, New Haven has converted the majority of its metered spaces to credit card accepting meters and has employed the use of the Park Mobile payment app which will work on all meters city wide, offering residents and visitors multiple options where for decades prior small change was necessary. Regardless, when unaddressed tickets accumulate and late notices are ignored the city has to resort to booting and sometimes towing a vehicle. When a boot/wheel immobilizer is applied documentation is left affixed to the vehicle answering the questions you outline in your post. Beyond information regarding paying at City Hall during normal business hours, the documentation left on the vehicle at the time of booting clearly states “Cash & credit card payments can be made at Crown Auto Center 388 Crown St New Haven, CT Monday – Friday 6pm – 8am and all day Saturday and Sunday”, as well as “Failure to make payment within 12 hours of your vehicle being wheel immobilized will result in your vehicle being towed at an additional cost of $77.00”. In the event of a vehicle being towed to Crown, when the owner of the vehicle goes to Crown with the intention of paying and they’ve left their wallet inside of the car Crown staff will retrieve the wallet with the person present to facilitate the payment and release of the vehicle.
Another tool we now provide the residents and visitors of New Haven is the New Haven Connect App(http://newhavenconnect.com/). In the past six months we changed our payment processing provider, which has helped us improve efficiencies and has seen an increase in payments via mobile devices. The website service we use to pay tickets is now mobile friendly and can be easily be accessed through New Haven Connect. Recently we have seen online payments overtake walk-in payments in terms of dollars, and we are looking to create a marketing campaign to promote New Haven Connect in the coming fiscal year - which is months. The implementation of this will greatly increase the ease of meter payment and avoidance of parking citations.
On a personal note, regarding the accusations of corruption & regression, although I disagree with your assessment of our practices I will not suggest that this or any aspect of municipal government is without room for improvement. However I do not believe that the policies in New Haven are incomparable to national standards for municipalities of similar size and population. The fact that I’m reading your critique of our practices and responding in this public forum is the result of our implementation of tools such as See Click Fix to better open dialogues with the public. Nearly all of our policies are a result of the enforcement of city ordinance, i.e. the law. I would encourage any fellow residents of New Haven who have practical suggestions on how to improve our policies to reach out to their Alder and request that the Board of Alders prioritize any viable revision. I would also encourage residents who are frequently receiving parking tickets to consider alternatives to avoid future citations such as the aforementioned meter payment alternatives, off street parking in the lots and garages that constitute 87% of parking in the downtown area alone, and most importantly public transit and multimodal transportation options such as bicycling. I along with a number of other city staff members ride my bicycle to work every day and enjoy never having to worry about parking tickets or motor vehicle property tax. I highly recommend it.

Stay #Connected on Mobile - Download the "New Haven Connect" app
http://onelink.to/9mq65z

Acknowledged.

*Stands and applauds the Evening Supervisor's comment!*

It really isn't hard to NOT get you car booted and towed. 1. Park Legally 2. Pay any fines for illegal parking (including expired meter) in a timely manner.

I personally love the ParkMobile app for parking around town. The up charge for its usage is well worth it for stress-free parking.

What I can't wrap my head around is why the heck would you leave your purse/wallet inside a car that had been booted?

My guess is that there were multiple tickets on the car or at least a very delinquent ticket. As much as we all hate getting tickets, you do have to pay them, or there are consequences. The fact that you can pay after hours with a credit card should make it easy to avoid booting. We all need to be responsible when driving/parking motor vehicles.

This issue has been addressed.