Molly Wheeler came home at 10:30 p.m. She parked her car on Edwards. She saw no signs warning her not to.
The next day her 1993 Honda Accord was gone.
She thought it might have been stolen. Then she saw a sign saying street sweepers were coming — the following day.
Her car had been towed.
Listening to Molly Wheeler (pictured), you might think she just didn’t see the emergency no-parking sign. That happens to lots of people whose cars get towed for street sweeping
But when Wheeler went to retrieve her car Wednesday from Tony’s Long Wharf, she found a crowd of her neighbors doing the same — and making the same complaint. They too insisted no signs had been posted the night before, at least not before they went to bed.
“It was like an East Rock parade,” she said. “People were pissed.” They exchanged phone numbers; one towee discussed the possibility of legal action.
The Independent, too, started hearing stories like Wheeler’s from East Rockers after what appeared to be an overnight bonanza for tow companies and city government fine-collectors.
City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts has received complaints too. Click here to read a letter he wrote in response to some of the complaints.
He also reported Friday that the city towed twice as many cars as usual this week in East Rock. He said he didn’t know why yet. The city’s looking into it, he said. (Public works chief John Prokop, who reports to Smuts, was out of town this week.)
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga insisted “sufficient paper signs were posted … 24 hours in advance of the posted sweep” in East Rock.
At this point, it’s her word against the neighborhood’s.
And it’s the latest episode in a year-long series of controversies pitting car owners against a cash-strapped city. Sometimes the city tows cars to clear streets for sweeping crews, like the ones that collected leaves on East Rock roads Wednesday and Thursday. Other times it sends crews to check license plates of parked cars to abscond with cars whose owners owe back taxes.
Such efforts have helped New Haven avoid higher tax increases or more painful budget cuts the past few years. On the other hand, the city has seen episodes of political favoritism and remarkable incompetence, such as the repeated towing (five times!) of a Hamden woman’s car because a computer kept reading one letter of her license plate wrong.
No Sign Of Trouble
Such aggressive tactics have made car-owners wary. Arabella Yip and her boyfriend both came home to Humphrey Street around the same time Tuesday night, 8:30 p.m. Yip looked for no-parking signs before leaving her MINI Clubman. She didn’t see any. Nor did her boyfriend. A metal sign reassured her that street sweeping would occurred only between April 1 and Nov. 1.
(“That is what is posted on the signs, which we are in the process of taking down,” Rob Smuts said. The metal signs refer to regular street sweeping. Wednesday and Thursday’s runs were for leaves, for which paper signs are used.)
“The irony,” Yip remarked later, “is that we actually talked about how we didn’t have to worry about street sweeping anymore when we were parking that night, which of course prompted us to look.”
No such luck. Both their cars were gone the next morning.
At first, she recalled, they were “alarmed, because we thought our cars had been stolen (which they effectively were). Then we were relieved when we found out they were towed, then angry and frustrated. We also felt powerless — what’s to prevent this from happening again? Will we have to constantly wake up in the middle of the night to check that some random decrepit piece of paper hadn’t been secretly posted on some random bush a block and a half away from my car?”
Their cars had been towed to two separate lots. They paid $12 for a cab ride to the first lot to pick the first car. Each tow cost $77. That’s on top of the $50 city fine for each car. At each tow shop they encountered “at least ten” of their neighbors.
Rafael Rosengarten said he happened to check twice for no-parking notices on Orange Street between Pearl and Eld — once when he drove his Subaru Forester downtown around 9 p.m. Tuesday, then when he returned around 1 a.m. He insisted he saw no signs before retiring.
The next morning, when his car had vanished, he reported, “I saw what may have been the remnant of a sign, basically some duct tape and a bit of poster-board, attached to a pole about a block away from where I had parked on Orange Street. I did see some signs left up on Pearl Street.
“My whole day was ruined by the incident. I was fuming the entire day. After retrieving my car I felt somewhat relieved, but still like I had been taken advantage of. “
Rosengarten reported one silver lining: “The tow truck company used a flat-bed for my car, which is all-wheel-drive. Had they dragged it they would have ripped up the alignment.”
Clank
Molly Wheeler wasn’t so lucky. She never made it home from Tony’s Long Wharf.
She started driving, then had to stop. The engine shield had fallen off and hit the ground.
Tony’s was nice enough to fix her car for her — and owner Tony Juliano promised to refund her $77. (She said she’s still trying to arrange a time to get her money back. Juliano couldn’t be reached for comment.)
Note: If you live in Wooster Square or Fair Haven, look out for signs Sunday night. Leaf sweeping will take place in the neighborhoods Monday.
Better yet, find a driveway.
I was so annoyed at the city blanketing the trees in my neighborhood I was tempted to pull them off. Good thing I didn't.... but someone else must have, because I know I saw signs covering Edwards Street. Very odd, especially as it coincides with so many of us practically begging Public Works to stop ripping bark off trees with their signs.