Logan City raises booting fee to $70
Plan on keeping an extra $20 in your wallet.
On April 17, the Logan City Council unanimously approved an increase in the maximum booting fee, changing it from $50 to $70.
“The $20 increase, I think, makes a difference in terms of just keeping up with the cost of living,” Councilman Stephen Thompson said.
The increase came in a resolution that revamped the city’s booting ordinance. Other changes include a requirement that all booters wear identification – like a name tag – and are able to provide a copy of the valid written agreement they have with the owner of the property they are booting on.
The ordinance also lists criminal convictions employees involved in booting cannot have on their record, and requires booting companies to allow credit cards to be used for the payment of fees.
Steven Taylor, chairman of the Logan City Council, said he thinks the market – not the city – should set the price of the fees. But he said regulation of booting fees by the city goes back between seven or eight years when the council had to start regulating the fees because of conflicts surrounding booting near the university.
Taylor said the fee hasn’t been changed since it was originally set.
According to Zach Ames, ASUSU liaison to the city council, the increase was initiated in February by Dennis Shaw, owner of Cache Valley Booting, because the fee hadn’t been raised for about seven years.
At the council’s March 20 meeting, the public got a chance to voice their opinion about the changes. During this meeting, which Thompson said lasted about six hours, the council heard from several different members of the community including Ames, Shaw, another booting company owner, Dennis Cole and ASUSU Executive Vice President Troy Smith.
According to the minutes of that meeting, Shaw said students were a majority of the problem in his business. He also expressed his concerns about employees being required to wear name tags and the requirement to provide a document authorizing employees to boot. Shaw also asked that the council favorably consider his request to increase the booting fee to $70 due to his increasing costs.
Cole also expressed his concern about identification of employees, and also claimed that there could be problems for his small business with requiring booters to accept credit cards.
Ames and Smith focused on the financial implications an increase would have on students.
Ultimately, the council compromised by giving the booting companies their increase while implementing requirements for employee identification and a copy of the written agreement, the use of credit cards as payment and background checks for booters – all things Ames said are in students’ best interests.
“I know the booting companies weren’t happy, and I know the students weren’t happy,” Thompson said. “So, I guess, in a perfect world, it was a pretty good ordinance because we compromised with all the parties involved, and everybody had to give a little bit.
“I feel that, particularly with this issue, I hope the students feel that the city council has maybe not given them everything that they wanted, but that we have been cognizant of their needs and we have listened and tried to arrive at something that is workable with all sides, with empathy for the students’ situation.”
Ames agreed that the compromise was a good thing.
Even though Ames and Thompson agree the compromise seems to be a good thing, there were still some problems.
Ames said the ordinance was pushed through by “a month of emotion,” instead of facts about the cost of living and any numbers showing the harm to the booting companies’ operating budgets by having the fee stay at $50.
“They’re increasing it with no data to support their changes. There was no proof, evidence or facts or figures to support this increase,” he said.
Ames also said the 40 percent increase is too much because it is so much higher than inflation.
Taylor said the fees have never been heavily evaluated from the start. He said the council did some research and found that many university communities have much higher booting fees than Logan.
Thompson’s concerns were more about the process involved in passing the ordinance.
“I think that point where we accepted public comment could have been handled better,” he said.
Thompson was referring to the six-hour “meeting from hell” in which the changes to the ordinance were discussed, along with other things on the agenda. Thompson, who was out of town and phoned in so he could be present electronically at the meeting, said he made a motion to continue the discussion in the next council workshop, but the motion did not pass.
“The majority of the council felt that they just wanted to finish the agenda. I don’t think that was the correct thing to do,” Thompson said. “Personally, I would have rather waited until everyone was fresh, because I don’t know how many students got worn out and left and how many people were just tired of waiting because it was so unreasonably long that night.”
Taylor disagrees with Thompson, saying it would have been “highly inappropriate” not to finish the meeting.
“It’s easy to put it on the length of the meeting, but the outcome would have been the same either way,” Taylor said.
But despite the concerns, Ames and Thompson agree that being booted is a bad situation, but is better than the alternative – towing.
“You’re really held hostage to the situation, and it isn’t a pleasant experience when you come out of, whether it be at a sporting event, or a party, or having a late evening, and come to your car and find an immobilization device on your car,” Thompson said. “I really wish personally we didn’t have to have boots on cars and tow trucks or things like that that cause aggravation in our lives.”
-dabake@cc.usu.edu