Why pay someone else when we could open our own towing lot on vacant City land?
Posted by: Noel Jones
This past summer, some West Ward residents met with Councilwoman Elinor Warner, Director of Public Works, Dave Hopkins, and Becky Bradley, Planning Director regarding street sweeping and code enforcement in the neighborhood. At that meeting, Tim Pickel and Dennis Lieb suggested, as an aside to the meeting, a new revenue stream idea: Why not stop paying Easton Autobody in excess of $100K/year to store towed cars and open our own towing lot on vacant City property? The immediate pushback was that it would
require building a fence and getting liability insurance, which Easton Autobody already has. Elinor Warner asked the logical follow-up question: So what? If Easton Autobody can get insurance, so can we. Not only would we save money, but we could be making money. We could still use towing companies for the actual towing of vehicles, but we would be earning a fee for the storage of the towed vehicles.
That was the last I heard of that great resident idea for a long time--an idea, I might add, that doesn't rely on handouts but actually creates a way for us to make money on our own. (Residents have been expressing over and over again a desire on this blog to wean Easton off grants and start some creative revenue streams). Then, last month at a City Council meeting, Mayor Panto brought up the City's initiative to add a third towing company to the approved list, which is then governed by the City Towing Ordinance--take note: there are no contracts involved. And guess what? Elinor Warner asked why we needed three towing companies and why we were paying Easton Autobody to store our cars. The Mayor answered that the third towing company was needed to handle the number of tows. Warner asked how many tows were needed during the recent snowstorm. Mayor Panto said there were nine. Three towing companies for nine cars. He did not answer Warner on the question of storing the cars ourselves. She follow-up twice and was deflected, so she gave up. This is where resident support at City Council meetings is important--the elected officials who are asking the right questions are outnumbered and need our support.
This is why I made a New Year's resolution to attend an average of one City Council meeting per month. I fell short in January, so that means I'm going to try to attend both meetings in March (I made my February meeting). These meetings are often short--less than an hour, and because so few people attend (usually only one or two people outside of two reporters and a couple of self-interested folks who have personal items on the agenda--certificates of appropriateness for their properties and such) even a handful of residents in attendance and speaking up can have an impact. When residents speak up they are usually quoted in the papers, and that too helps pressure elected officials to listen to residents with good ideas. It is through this kind of citizen engagement that our new street sweeping program has finally passed and will be starting up this Spring, so when citizen engage in their democracy, it does bring positive change.
Below is a Morning Call article by Michael Duck on the Mayor's recent initiative to hire another towing company, and to set a limit on towing fees, which is actually a sensible idea:
Easton To Consider Setting Towing Fees by The Morning Call's Michael Duck
What do you think? Does Easton need three towing companies? And should we continue to pay Easton Autobody over $100K/year to store cars that we could store ourselves? Is there anywhere else in our community where that money could be better spent--or--any even crazier idea--couldn't we just save that money for a rainy day?
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8 comments:
Dennis, I like the idea of committing to one city council meeting per month. That's doable. Count me in.
Laureston...I think you meant to say Noel. Anyway, I go when I can without commiting to anything. Depends on the agenda. I've been to two out of four so far this year.
Noel...My original conversation over the towing policy and other parking violation solutions took place about two years ago with an Easton patrolman, who came to my street to ticket two abandoned vehicles and a motorcycle that had been parked on my sidewalk for three months.
I invited him in and we chatted for a good twenty minutes about the policies and proceedures. We ended up agreeing on practically everything, including the facts that parking abuse runs rampant on a daily basis - especially handicap spaces, our own towing service shouldn't be dismissed over insurance issues and booting cars after they have overstayed their welcome on the street would do wonders. They would have to pay to get the boot off rather than just move it a few spaces after the towing warning sticker has faded out from enduring the city mandated notification period.
I also learned that the very long pre-towing notifiaction is not some state law but a city regulation that we could change if we wanted to. If this is indeed true we should be doing that AND using the boot to leverage enforcement AND towing cars ourselves.
DRL
And making money from it!
I appreciate your call for new revenue sources. We cannot continue to pay for the taxes we are charged. The income tax is tough.
Easton is not good at running things. It is out of the garbage collection business, it turned over its water plant operation. it used outsiders to run its sewer plant. I don't think that the city could run a towing business. It would hire employees that would be expensive and they would all be related to Vulcano.
We need to think smaller and smaller government for a village that is no longer a city. Less government and less taxes is a great goal. If there is money to be made in towing, charge the businesses doing the towing. Don't create another costly city department
Anon 9:02--I hear you, but this would only be for storing, not for the towing.
Anon brings up a good point though--how would an employee or two needed to oversee the lot be handled best? If we hire part-time employees are they entitled to benefits and pensions? Could we contract those out to avoid that?
it seems to me that the city had its own towing many years ago and outsourced it because it was more cost-effective. While this new administration has won many of the issues with the unions, i believe they would fight any positionof the city that was an on-call position. They would file an unfair labor practice. Hesk they have been threatening that when the Ambassador program was started and that's paid with private funds.
It's easy for us in the private sector to think about better ways of doing things but I was in the public sector for years and I am convinced that if money could be made this administration would be exploring options.
I did read in the paper two weeks ago that the mayor sent this very issue to the Public Safety committee for their review and recommendations to the full council. I also know that the city is already getting fee from the towers each time they tow a car.
As for insurance, it's easy to push that aside as an excuse but towed vehicles cannot be placed on an empty lot. They must be in an approved impound facility.
I suggest going to the public safety meeting.
The suggestions made here are excellent and should be explored, especially the boot, which apparently the city has purchased one several months ago. I also like the street sweeping program for the same reason -- to find abandoned cars.
The union stuff is tricky but what about storage. Why does it have to go to Easton Auto Body. They get money for that.
They are polluters of the environment dumping down that hill and also increasing their real estate by covering it with dirt.
Anon 1:02--I did not know that--that is not good...
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