New, Improved City Stickers Debut Despite Puppy Interruptus
Monday morning, the City Clerk’s office press conference, immediately went to the dogs.
The theme of the 2009-2010 Chicago city sticker is “Dog Friendly Chicago,” and this year’s design, courtesy of design winner Denise Ferguson, a senior from Corliss High School certainly reflects that.
In fact, the city had 12-week old dog named Bert on hand, to further emphasize this point.
But as del Valle began his press conference, the Doberman/German Shepard mix breed puppy, unfamiliar with press conference protocol and, of course, still not house broken, decided to do his business right on floor of the City Hall building.
The Clerk, to his credit, hardly skipped a beat as the offending interruption was quickly cleaned up to polite laughter, and went on to officially introduce the city’s new and vastly improved city sticker for 2009-1010.
The biggest and most impressive improvement is, the new city sticker also includes your residential parking permit (if applicable to your residence). So instead of having two decals on your windshield, now you have one.
In addition, the new sticker is bad news for counterfeiters as the Clerk’s office has introduced three main improvements.
First, like in the above graphic, your license plate number will be listed on the sticker. In addition, if you are in a residential permit parking zone, that number will be listed too.
The sticker also has some reflective printing and bar coding to make sure it’s legit. So, you may want to think again, if some squirrelly dude in a dark alley has a few “extra” city stickers to sell you for a reduced price.
The only problem with a city sticker with your license plate printed on it, will be if your license plate gets stolen. The police recommend, in the instance of a stolen plate, you replace the plate with a new plate number, so the former plate won’t get you in trouble, since it will be reported stolen.
However, the Clerk’s office, according to Kristine Williams, Information Coordinator for the City Clerk’s office, will replace the sticker with the old plate number at no cost to the driver.
“The person must bring in proof of originally purchasing a sticker (receipt) as well as police report documenting the stolen plates and bring in their new license plate information,” explained Williams. “We can then replace the sticker at no cost.”
The Clerk’s office has made some investments in technology that will allow for faster printing and delivery of city stickers and guest passes. Starting this year, your city sticker will come in a self-mailer.
The 2009-2010 city stickers will be available for purchase online via the City Clerk’s website, this Wednesday, May 20th. Del Valle is hoping to double the number of sticker purchases online from last year’s “sticker season.”
Next week, nearly 1.3 million renewal letters will go out to current city sticker owners, “in the largest renewal mailing in city history,” according to del Valle.
The 2008-2009 city stickers expire on June 30th.
Another improvement for this year is, for the first time, drivers living in residential parking zones will be able to purchase daily guest passes online.
Or, if you’re old school, you can still purchase your sticker in person starting the beginning of June by coming to City Hall or to any of the city’s payment centers. In addition, for an additional $5.50 fee, you can obtain your city sticker at your local Currency Exchange or at participating Dominick’s and banks.
Aldermanic ward offices will also host city sticker sale dates. Check the schedule here to buy your city sticker at your alderman’s office.
Ultimately, the goal of the Clerk’s office is to offer staggered expiration dates on city stickers like license plate stickers, so as to not be as stressful or chaotic as a one date deadline every year.
“We want to move away from a one time annual sticker purchase,” said Williams. “Depending on how this year goes our goal is to have it (staggered sticker expiration dates) out in the next two years. This (improvement in printing and purchasing technology) is the first step to get us to that point.”
I love the design of the sticker, and that Chicago is announcing it pet-friendliness! There are so many fun things to do with dogs in Chicago – it’s a great dog-friendly city.
Hey Amy,
try to take little doggie to see the bean at millinium park, or anything else at that park.
Then tell me how friendly we are to dogs.
I went online to purchase my city sticker after receiving my renewal notice in the mail. I entered my notice number as requested, filled out the info that was missing, such as email address, clicked to continue, and it changed my info from a small Toyota roller skate to a Class A Truck, and upped my fee from $75 to $180! I went back and tried this several times, all with the same result. I then called the clerk’s office, and explained the problem to the nice man who answered the phone. I told him the website was obviously run by the same engineers that time Chicago’s traffic lights (you know, the ones that make you stop at every block even when you are on a main thoroughfare….) He was sympathetic and told me NOT to purchase the sticker! DUH! He then gave me a phone number to contact the IT people in charge of the site. I called the number and got a message something like “we are not available to answer your call,” followed by being hung up on. (I have to assume they had their hands filled with some one way side street’s light not stopping the traffic on Irving Park Road.) I then decided the city clerk’s office could not handle the technological wonders of the internet. I then drove to the city office on Addison, where the line stretched out the door and down the entire length of the strip mall where it’s located. I then decided the city clerk’s ofice could not handle the age-old concept of face to face cumstomer service. So today I dropped my renewal form, along with my check for $75 in the mail. Here’s hoping the city clerk’s office can handle their snail mail! So much for the city that works….
So, I bought a new car, and went to get a sticker for it and it has my new cars make and model but the old car’s license plate!
I called the currency exchange the next day and was told by the lady that it just didn’t matter. “I doesn’t matter, alot of peoples stickers printed with out a number,it just said applied”
I somehow don’t believe her. What should I Do? Call the CIty clerk?
please advise.
[...] 2009, the Clerk’s office gave an extreme makeover to buying city stickers, converting it from a laboriously slow manual exercise to a fully digital print process. Drastic [...]