Enforcement Begins Saturday With $120 Tickets

Lines for city sticker purhases at 2550 W. Addison

The Chicago City Sticker sales seasons enters its last and final week, with sales officially ending Friday at midnight.

City sticker season began this past June 1st and runs six weeks until July 15th to allow every driver with a car registered in Chicago to purchase the $75 vehicle sticker. Larger vehicles, over 4500 pounds pay $120.00.

City Clerk officials are bracing for long, long lines at City Hall and the Clerk’s two satellite offices, as well as Department of Revenue payment centers around the city. Procrastinators are encouraged to go sooner than later to avoid brutal lines at the end of the week.

“While we are slightly ahead of sales this year, we always anticipate long lines
as the deadline to purchase city stickers nears,” says City Clerk spokesperson Kristine Williams. “No matter how many options we provide for people to buy their sticker early and avoid the long lines, there will always be people who wait until the last minute.”

Currency Exchanges, Dominick’s Grocery Stores and a handful of other neighborhood sales locations are also selling city stickers but charging an additional $5.50 fee.

In addition, a few aldermanic ward sales for city stickers have yet to occur this week and provide a convenient and fast alternative to other city locations.

City sticker sales are ahead of last year’s sales by about $2 million over this time last year. Most of this sales edge is due to a 15% increase in online sales. Sales through the City Clerk’s website were 225,331 as of Monday compared to 196,140 in online sales for the same time last year.

Clerk’s Office officials admit City Clerk Susana Mendoza’s original, ambitious goal of 330,000 city stickers sold online will not be met by Friday.

“We had set a very aggressive goal of about 300,000 stickers to be sold online this
year,” says Williams. “We are thrilled that we had an increase this year and people continue to see a benefit to buying their sticker online and avoiding the lines. We’ll look at ways to improve online sales and the benefits to buying online.”

Drivers must purchase, affix and display their city sticker by July 15th, or face the threat of a $120 ticket starting July 16th and a $40 late fee in addition to the original $75 fee for the decal.