See if this reminds you of a circular firing squad:
Warning: More tickets, tows, boots on the way for Houston cars
Parking scofflaws who drive under the radar are more likely to be nabbed under a system that received a Houston City Council committee’s blessing Tuesday.
The proposed $1.6 million upgrade to the city’s parking management databases would let enforcement teams view parking citation information on a mobile handset, so officers could immediately “boot” or tow a vehicle if it had too many unpaid citations.
And:
HPD: Many towed cars get lost, misplaced
On Monday, HPD Captain Williams Staney told the Council Committee on Public Safety at Houston City Hall that their system was not working.
He said that 135,000 vehicles are towed from illegal parking spots and because of traffic violations each year in Houston.
Captain Staney says that HPD has one phone number that drivers and tow truck companies both call for information. He said that phone lines get an average of 845 calls each and every day.
HPD admits the bottleneck can lead to confusion, data mistakes and very long wait times for Houstonians wanting to find out if their vehicles were either stolen or towed without their consent.
“The call takers and data entry people get overwhelmed with the whole amount of vehicles being entered but at the same time they have people calling in looking for their vehicles,” said Frankie Rash of Fast Tow Wrecker Service. “It can be very overwhelming,” he said for both his staff and for police.
The solution? A $1.3 million web-based towed vehicle reporting management system, of course!
So, here we have Liliana Rambo wanting to spend $1.6 million on new technology to ticket, boot, and tow more cars (she promises a one million dollar return on the investment for the city), and then we have HPD wanting to spend $1.3 million on new technology because the department admits it cannot keep track of all the towed vehicles for which it’s responsible. Got that? Revenue-wise, the city should make out quite well. Residents? Not so much.
The big exception to all this is around HPD headquarters, because there is absolutely no ticketing, booting, or towing going on there.
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