,
41 tweets,
7 min read
Read on Twitter
i swear to god if i get stood up again by the towing committee i’m gonna have a fit 
i hate the second floor conference room because it is exactly as large as it needs to be for the people sitting at the table & there are no seats for the public. i have to take a chair from the table and drag it into the corner.
this committee is made up of two police officers, two towing company representatives, and one community representative. one of the cops just asked me who i am and why i’m here and seemed surprised to find out these meetings are legally required to be open to the public.
so far we’ve got two cops and one of the towing reps at the table, along with (inexplicably) rick siebert (a city employee) and rob woodside (who is on the human rights commission). quorum is usually 1/2+1, although this committee has no bylaws according to my FOIA request.
rick siebert, the city employee at the table, explained to the cop that i “tweet commentary” about city meetings & that i’m responsible for forcing his committee (parking) to begin publicly noticing their meetings & taking minutes (that’s the law)
the citizen representative and another person i believe is a city employee are now present & the meeting is getting started. my first towing committee meeting! i’m so thrilled.
a quick check of council meetings minutes tells me woodside was appointed to TWO ADDITIONAL BOARDS (in addition to his service on the human resources commission) at a december 2018 meeting - the rivanna river basin commission and the towing committee. 🤔
the board’s city webpage has been updated since i last checked... it now actually lists its members and says it meets once per year, where it used to say it meets every other month.
“it ain’t nothin’ but everybody complaining,” says one of the towing reps about the mycville app, in a discussion about how they might try to better log towing cases. (he isn’t necessarily wrong about that)
the city attorney’s office allegedly conducts FOIA trainings with every board and commission. the towing rep at the table has never heard of FOIA.
the police officer complains that people can “say whatever they want” on the mycville app. the city staffer at the table explains to him that it is a “limited public forum” and “we’re not in the business of restricting people’s free speech.”
just a side note, i’m pretty uncomfortable sitting in the corner of a conference room full of cops & this guy!
the citizen rep, buzz, says the “grandfathering” (a word i dislike) in the law that allows old towing signs to remain after an ordinance change isn’t great (i agree - the signs should probably be correct with regard to the towing ordinance)
everyone except the cop who didn’t think i should be at this public meeting seems to agree that the signs with the law on them should reflect the correct, current law 🤷♀️
looking at some data! in approximately 8 months of data (late 2017-mid 2018), there are a little over 2100 towing incidents. buzz says in those records, there are only 3 license plates that occur more than once.
apparently the board previously discussed “escalating fines” for repeat offenders, but there are so few the idea was dismissed.
the two citizen reps on the board are hoping to do some GIS mapping of where cars are being towed from. much of the activity is in concentrated places (corners of 1st and market & 2nd and water and on elliewood st, notably)
the towing rep is a firm advocate of clean, clear, properly placed towing signs (probably to protect himself in court). he says collier’s (a rival company) has many extremely small, out of date signs.
(according to the data, the OVERWHELMING majority of tows for illegally parked cars are towed by collier’s)
oh wow this data is really messy (because it’s based on whatever the tow driver happened to write down). it would be helpful to be able to clean & consolidate a lot of the location information, but that would have to be done by hand.
the current ordinance sets the punishment for “out of compliance tows” as “a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of not more than $100.”
buzz suggests raising that to $150. companies skirting the towing laws are making a lot of money & should be fined more as a deterrent.
buzz suggests raising that to $150. companies skirting the towing laws are making a lot of money & should be fined more as a deterrent.
wait... if a towing company tows your car & fails to comply with the proper reporting requirement... they can’t charge you for the tow & will get fined, but they can still charge you the storage fee to get your car back?!
the towing rep said earlier that it’s extremely uncommon for all of this information to actually be collected, which means most tows are technically out of compliance 🤷♀️
the current law requires the towing company to retain records for three years. the board proposes shortening it to two years (as most legal claims would have a two year statute of limitations anyway)
am i having a strange dream? the towing rep is agreeing with buzz about lowering the maximum fine for notification (if your car is on the tow lot for more than 3 days, they have to notify the lien holder & can charge you $150 to do that!!)
“a lot of people just use this to make extra money,” he says. buzz recommends lowering the cost to $100, the towing rep says he would be comfortable lowering it to $75.
the law currently doesn’t require the tow company to provide proof that they performed the record check & notification in order to charge that fee. the board would like to require that proof in order to charge the fee.
the cop says there’s no way to really track how much this happens because if the car is released prior to actually being towed, it doesn’t have to be called in.
anecdotally, i’ve heard some horror stories about tow truck drivers extorting people at this stage of the tow, demanding payment in excess of the $50 (and cash only) for the release of their vehicle.
rick, the city’s parking director, says business owners would like to be able to boot people “because it makes people so mad when you tow them.” (this would also make me very mad though?)
rick says in montgomery, private businesses contract with a company to boot cars on their property. it isn’t done in conjunction with any public entity.
buzz says that when people get towed, they have some other entity to direct their anger at (the towing company). if businesses boot a car, they draw the car owner’s ire directly.
(rick isn’t a member of this board - maybe the parking and towing boards don’t both need to exist and should be combined)
i’ve never had my car booted and am surprised to learn to can call a number, pay over the phone, enter a code, and remove the boot yourself? then you have to put the boot in your car and return it to the company?!
“i disagree with it all the way around because it takes business away from the wrecker companies,” the towing rep says candidly. but if booting is allowed he says it would have to be regulated by the towing committee so they can’t just charge any amount they want.
rick says the parking advisory panel has already discussed this and proposes a fee of $100 for booting. (WHY do both of these bodies exist separately?!!?)
only parked cars get towed. where you are allowed to park determines where you are not allowed to park. parking where you are not allowed to park gets you towed. towing & parking should be discussed together. just combine the two boards. this is absurd.
there is a parking advisory panel meeting next week, don’t worry!
meeting adjourned. the towing advisory board will meet again in october.
speaking of parking, there were no validation tickets at the meeting. i had to go to the city manager’s office to ask for one. the interaction took about 3 minutes, which put me 3 minutes over the 2 hours they validated for 😒
also “two hour validation” technically only pays for one hour of parking because the first hour is always free!
