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GREENSBORO — Habitual parking offenders may soon get the boot.

The City Council gave informal approval Tuesday to a plan that would allow enforcement officers to begin booting and towing vehicles of violators who already have three unpaid citations in a 90-day period.

The council also gave its initial endorsement for the city to set up two taxi stands in the center city and establish an ordinance to allow companies to offer valet parking.

Boots are locks attached to the left front wheel of a vehicle that prevent the owner from driving it. Their use would represent the most aggressive step the city has yet taken to crack down of flagrant parking violators and collect nearly $2.1 million in unpaid fines.

A committee looking at downtown parking issues has stopped short of measures such as raising fines or adding parking meters to South Elm Street, where most violations take place.

"We want to hit the people who egregiously abuse the system and try not to impact the normal citizen who accidentally stays 15 minutes too long," said Michael B. Cramer, business and operations manager for the Greensboro department of transportation. "We don't want to change the fines right now."

Council members liked what they heard.

"Fantastic," Florence Gatten said in response to Cramer's proposals.

On the booting and towing issue, Cramer said he hopes to provide a proposed ordinance for the council to consider Oct. 16.

If the council approves the action, as expected, booting and towing would likely begin early next year, Cramer said.

Here's how the process would work:

If a violator has three outstanding citations in a 90-day period, an enforcement officer would write a fourth ticket, place a boot on the vehicle and leave a brochure telling the driver how to have the boot removed.

Depending on the time of day, the violator would go to either the police records office or the city collections department. Before the vehicle is released, the offender would have to pay all outstanding fines, including the current one, plus a $50 administration fee.

An enforcement officer would then remove the boot.

If the matter isn't resolved in 24 hours, the vehicle would be towed at the owner's expense.

Cramer said Greensboro is the only major city in the state that doesn't have such an ordinance. He estimates it will cost less than $60,000 to start the new program, which would be paid for with collected fines.

In addition to improved collections, city officials hope the tougher enforcement measures will open up additional parking spaces downtown. They want business owners and employees to use parking decks or long-term lots instead of on-street parking.

"The tools we have to get people to pay their parking fines is pretty limited," City Manager Mitchell Johnson told the council. " ... The life blood of any downtown is access."

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or donpatterson@news-record.com