Anna Festa was trying to get two sick boys to the doctor when she looked out the window and saw her car was gone — towed due to a “clerical error” at City Hall. Now she’s fighting to get her money back.
Festa was juggling her three young kids, ages 1, 2 and 4, at her East Rock home one gray day in January. Two were beset with vomiting and diarrhea. She was preparing to take them to the pediatrician — until the Plate Hunter came her way.
“I was going upstairs to change diapers and I looked out the window,” said Festa, her temperature rising as she recounted the episode at her Canner Street home.
Her Ford Explorer had disappeared.
Festa’s husband was off on a business trip, leaving her with one — now zero — cars. It was late in the day, after 5 p.m., on Jan. 23. She called police headquarters to see if the car had been stolen. They told her it had been towed due to taxes.
Festa admitted she had been delinquent on paying the car tax one year; she let the 2005 bill slip. But she straightened the books over a year ago, paying off the delinquent bill in January 2007.
Festa, a life-long New Havener, said she pays thousands of dollars in taxes every year between three properties and two cars. When the Plate Hunter snatched her SUV, she was sure she had no outstanding bills.
The Plate Hunter effort, and the city’s towing program in general, has come under review by the city as a result of several controversies. (Click here to read about that.)
The young mother described the tax horror story that left her enraged to the point of tears.
“They have no clue what they put me through those two days,” Festa said, holding her 15-month-year-old on her lap.
Because she didn’t have a car, her two kids missed their doctor appointments. She arranged for a babysitter the next day, and got a ride down to City Hall.
“They told me it was ‘my fault’ I was towed.” The city said she owed $724 in taxes. She didn’t believe it, but she wanted the car back. She paid up and trekked to Tony’s Long Wharf, where she paid $95 in cash to retrieve her SUV.
Only four months later, on Monday of this week, did she learn that the whole towing episode had happened “for no reason.” Returning to the tax collector’s office to get a DMV form stamped on a separate car, she got a puzzled response.
A clerk did a double-take at the computer screen, then asked for a supervisor.
“We owe you money,” came the eventual conclusion.
“Oh really?” Festa replied.
It turned out the city owed her $724.10 — the exact amount she was forced to pay when her car was towed in January. The admission sent her reeling in frustration and anger.
“This is unprofessional, disrespectful, uncalled for — and they’re thieves,” seethed Festa.
“My car was towed for no reason,” she declared, laying out the evidence on her dining room table Tuesday. “My taxes were paid.”
Reached Tuesday, mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said Festa was double-billed due to a “clerical error.”
Plate Hunter Back On The Prowl
The city tax collector “needs to straighten out his system before getting the towing companies involved,” Festa maintained.
She was particularly miffed to hear that a well-connected businessman, Mike Suraci, had avoided a tow by calling a marshal and the tax collector.
“He didn’t get towed,” she said. “And I paid my taxes!”
Mayor John DeStefano suspended the program April 11 after the Independent reported that a marshal called off a tow of a politically connected minister, Boise Kimber. DeStefano then ordered the state marshals who oversee the program to go back to school for sensitivity training. The city’s Plate Hunter, which scans license plates for overdue taxes, is back on the streets this week.
Three marshals — Peter Criscuolo, Mark DeAngelis and Andrew Esposito III — have taken a recertification course and are back to work, Mayorga said.
Meanwhile, Festa’s on a quest to get her money back. She wants her $724 returned — with three months’ interest.
What about the $95 in cash she shelled out to Tony’s Long Wharf? The tax collector’s office told her she probably wouldn’t get it back, she said.
Festa’s dead set on reclaiming her money. “I will get it back,” she said. “I will go to small claims court, just to prove a point.”
Previous coverage of New Haven’s towing industry:
DMV To Towing Companies: No Sealed Bids
Kimber Gets Off The (Towing) Hook
“We’re Not Double-Dipping”
MS. Festa: Keep Fighting, you can beat City Hall. Make sure you get your $95 back also, the city is obviously responsible for you paying that. I bet they made you feel like a criminal when you went down to City Hall.