Soon, You Can Beat The Boot with Downtown Parking

If the Athens Clarke County Commission goes along with the plan for downtown, those with outstanding fines will be able to Beat The Boot.

Athens Downtown Development Authority director Pam Thompson has proposed, and the board has endorsed, setting an amnesty of two weeks in September for those with outstanding parking tickets. The incentive is that the tickets won’t double as they usually do—you’ll be forking over $10, say, instead of the typical $20 for not paying your ticket promptly.

The amnesty would be September 9th through the 20th.

“We want people to wipe the slate clean,” said Thompson. “Then they could come downtown without worrying.”

After the proposed amnesty ends, the ADDA will return to the practice of doubling unpaid tickets. And of booting scofflaws who owe fines of $200 or more. To have the boot removed, you must pay $50 and the outstanding tickets + penalties—or you can sign an agreement to appear in court and contest your ticket there.

Since the booting moratorium went into effect in May, Thompson has noticed a change in how downtown parkers take care of tickets. Typically, she said, 75 percent of the tickets are paid before they double. Since the booting stopping, that number has dropped to only 23 percent.