Chicago launched its Property Tax Relief Program this year, promising a $25-$200 grant to “qualifying homeowners.” I completed my application, mailed it in by the March 31 deadline, and the other day received an envelope from the city’s Tax Assistance Center. But inside was a letter saying my application could not be processed because I owed the city a “debt.” It was an unpaid parking ticket. With interest, it came to $73.20.
I asked her to explain, and she said the driver’s license number hadn’t been popping up for most callers. Then she had to search by name or some other way. But the number on my license came right up. So did all the information from the ticket. The infraction: parking/standing prohibited anytime.
“I had one woman call today, and her parking ticket was from 1986,” the clerk said.
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“There is no statute of limitations on parking tickets,” she said.
“How far back are you going?” I said.
The next day I trekked to the first floor of City Hall, where a Department of Revenue rep told me how it is. She said parking tickets, water bills, or anything else owed to the city would hold up the property-tax grant. She printed out my ticket history and the details of the 1997 ticket. I’d been issued four other tickets in the intervening years (2004, 2005, 2008 and 2010) and had paid them promptly.
The security guard pointed to the hours listed in the front window. Hearings had ended at 4. Riding home on the el, I racked my brain for anything that would have brought me downtown that July morning in 1997. My job was miles from the Loop. Besides, I’d worked out that it was a Saturday. And I sleep late on Saturday. Did I have friends in town? Some festival? Nothing came to mind.