NIU students and faculty are saving themselves some money.

The police department towed 21 vehicles over the holiday and “there was not one car from the whole university area,” DeKalb Police Chief Donald Berke said. “It’s the rest of the community that had the problems.”

Residents who park on snow routes can be issued a $25 ticket, Berke said. Cars that are not moved every seven days can be towed at the owner’s expense of $35 to $40 plus storage fees, Berke said.

“Surprisingly, the university is the cleanest,” he said. “That area we have very few problems with.”

The police department “stickered” 75 cars that had been apparently abandoned, he said. “Of those cars, we probably notified 50 to 60 percent of the owners.”

“Aside from putting stickers on the cars we notified the owners that their cars had to be moved by last Saturday or they’d be towed,” Berke said.

Residents who park their cars on city streets, even if the street is not a snow route, must move their car every seven days or it is considered an abandoned vehicle, he said.

The car will then be stickered and the police department will try to contact the owner, Berke said.

“Ultimately the car is towed if it is not moved,” he said.

Berke did say that the police department has refrained from towing when cars are parked on snow routes because “citizens would not readily accept it and we are ticketing the cars instead.”

The price of a ticket for parking on a snow route was raised last year from $10 to $25, he said.

“We issued about 50 tickets in the first part of December and probably the same number during the snow last Friday,” Berke said.

Berke said that compliance with snow routes is a little bit better this year.

Cars that are towed and not claimed within 10 days can be unked” unless they are seven years old or younger, he said.

“We refrain from doing that,” Berke said. “Instead, we send out a registered letter to the last known owner.”

“We make every effort to contact the owner before the car is junked out,” he said.

Berke said the department probably “starts junking proceedings for six to seven hundred cars per year.”

“If people comply with the snow routes, it’s easier for the snow plow drivers and it’s also the neighborly thing to do,” he said.