Ted Alert!

Leave it to Ver.

Comments (0) By Patricia Calhoun Thursday, Nov 20 2003

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"The Mile Dry City."

"Denver: As Sophisticated as Coors Light."

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"Denver: The Only Cow Town Without Cows."

"Denver: 342 Days of Skin Cancer."

"Denver: Join Us in Waiting for the Return of Elway."

"Denver: Your Traffic Jam in the Rockies."

"Denver: Four Seasons, One Brown Cloud."

"Denver: Where Parking Meters Decide Elections."

And, for a promotional Web site, "The Sprawl With It All: Denver!"

On his own Web site (www.causecommunications), Salzman posts other slogan submissions (one recent arrival: "Denver, where calling the cops can cost you your life") with the promise to send them on to Baier. "Once you market it as a hip city," Salzman sighs, "it's no longer hip."

It's just Denver, Ted's home town.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Like a great white shark, the Denver Department of Public Works van cruised along West 11th Avenue Tuesday morning, hungry for a victim. It was before 8 a.m., the hour when parking regulations take effect on that street and most other Denver thoroughfares, but it was not too early for the parking division to put the bite -- and the boot -- on some unsuspecting motorist. And so the van was out to make a kill, trolling for a license plate that connected to a juicy collection of tickets.

The sight was enough to send my car into the nearest off-street lot and my wallet on its semi-annual trip to the parking referee.

This time, though, there was no need to spew one of those obligatory, dog-ate-my-car-key stories that the referee listens to so patiently before she knocks off the standard, department-approved percentage of the total amount owed (usually the equivalent of the fines accumulated after those $20 tickets get more than twenty days old). Because under Mayor John Hickenlooper's Late-Fee Amnesty Program that kicked off on November 12, all penalties are automatically deducted if you pay your tickets by December 31. No excuses needed -- or wanted, really.

But then, the parking division was in a pretty inexcusable mess last year, after soon-to-be-ousted chief John Oglesby implemented his "world-class" parking plan. To help calm the protests, then-mayor Wellington Webb considered implementing an amnesty program, inspired by the more than $8 million that Chicago had netted with a similar scheme. But it took Hickenlooper to make such forgiveness official, as part of the parking changes he announced two weeks ago -- and had promised in his upstart mayoral campaign this past spring. "Parking meters were not designed to be a revenue generator," he said.

Despite the hundred bucks I just gave at his office, the amnesty program hasn't generated that much traffic. Not yet. "It's been slow," conceded a city clerk collecting the cash. But she's expecting a nice holiday rush toward the end of the amnesty period, right after Christmas. By then, a slew of new tickets issued to parkers confused by the rule changes will have accumulated fines, fines just waiting to be forgiven. So far, only the amnesty portion of the program has been introduced. The reduction in downtown meter rates, as well as the reintroduction of free parking on Sundays, won't start until the Friday after Thanksgiving. And in the meantime, the tickets pile up.

According to mayoral spokeswoman Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, between November 12 and November 17, the city received $291,552 in ticket payments -- $104,164 for parking tickets old enough to have their fines waived. None of that was from her, incidentally: Before she started at the mayor's office, Eichenbaum Lent's husband went online and paid all of her outstanding tickets. But she did pick up one more two weeks ago -- during Hickenlooper's parking-change announcement.

To err is human. To forgive? Divine.