- Wilmington has signed a one-year contract with City Towing Services, LLC.
- City Towing has provided towing and impoundment services to Wilmington for several years, and is a party to the federal civil rights lawsuit over the city’s towing practices.
- City officials are confident reforms to its towing policies and the contract with City Towing will improve issues drivers and residents have had.
- Parking advocates are less convinced of the reforms solving issues, pointing to how many of the announced changes were already outlined in earlier contracts with tow companies or are required by law.
Wilmington, once again, is contracting with a New Castle-based tow company that has a history of charging drivers for its services despite $0 promises in its bids for city contracts.
Three months after Delaware’s largest city received two bids for its towing and impoundment services, officials announced last week that it signed a one-year contract with City Towing Services LLC, a contractor that has performed these services for Wilmington for years and has been at the center of a federal lawsuit over Wilmington’s parking, towing and impoundment practices.
Mayor Mike Purzycki defended the city’s decision to contract with City Towing, pointing to the business’s low bid as the reason for the New Castle-based company’s selection.
According to the city’s bid results, City Towing bid $0 for both towing and daily vehicle storage. First State bid $160 for each tow and $20 per day for storing the vehicle.
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Both tow companies are parties to the federal lawsuit, which claims Wilmington allows private companies to tow legally parked cars that have unpaid parking tickets totaling over $200, scrap those vehicles when the outstanding debt is not paid within 30 days, and keep the proceeds.
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City officials promise that changes to Wilmington’s towing practices and revisions to the contract with City Towing will improve an inherently “fraught” system, but critics point out that many of those reforms were already outlined in earlier towing contracts or are required by law.
Institute for Justice attorney Will Aronin, who represents city residents who filed the federal suit against Wilmington in 2021, said the changes announced May 23 aren’t substantially different from what was already required.
“It’s just saying they are going to do a better job of supervising, which they had to do based on the contract and their constitutional obligations, anyway,” Aronin told Delaware Online/The News Journal.
What towing policies did Wilmington change?
The most notable change in the City Towing contract is the extension given to drivers to retrieve their cars. The tow company now must hold a car for 60 days before selling or scrapping the vehicle. Previously, it was 45 days.
The city also promises City Towing will be required to provide notification of plans to take the title of a car to the Wilmington police chief and finance director at least two weeks before pursuing the state process for taking the title.
The business cannot take the car until the police chief or finance director confirms the tow company has held the vehicle for the required 60 days, and it must provide the city with a mailed, certified notice that will be sent to owners of towed vehicles no later than 72 hours after the car is towed.
City Towing must also allow drivers access to the storage lot and their vehicle to obtain personal items from the car 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which attorney Aronin pointed out is already required by law.
Will this solve the towing issues?
Many of these efforts were announced last October and included promises to lower parking ticket fines and improve the ticket appeals process in Wilmington.
Purzycki expressed confidence the reforms would address the issues drivers and residents in Wilmington face.
“We are doing our best,” he said. “I think the things we have done to ensure against the kind of problems we’ve heard of in the past, I think they are going to be better.”
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Parking advocates, however, are less convinced, expressing concern about city officials claiming certain reforms as “new” when those policies and requirements were spelled out in previous towing contracts or were assumed to be performed by city officials as part of contractual oversight.
“Some of this stuff has been in previous contracts,” said Ken Grant, a parking advocate and public affairs professional in Wilmington. “And other stuff it’s like, ‘Wait, you weren’t providing that type of oversight before?’”
Purzycki wouldn’t say why the city has avoided investigating or performing an audit into how many cars are towed and later sold or scrapped by Wilmington’s contracted tow companies.
Since the federal civil rights suit was filed in September 2021, Wilmington has refused to provide information on the number of cars towed and later scrapped or sold using Delaware’s myriad exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act to deny records requests on the basis of “pending litigation.”
Clarity regarding the city’s towing practices and how many cars were sold or scrapped by its contractors may not be revealed until documents are released in the federal suit. That lawsuit, of which Aronin is a lead attorney, remains ongoing, and the parties are undergoing discovery.
“I’m glad to see that the city is responding to our suit by promising to make these badly needed changes,” Aronin said in a news release. “But this doesn’t address the root of the problem. The only way for the towing company to make money is to keep people’s cars and the city is still letting that happen.”
Got a tip? Contact Amanda Fries atafries@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mandy_fries.
