Prince William Empowered To Tow Vehicles

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Local
By Nicole Fisher
Source: Gainesville Times
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 2010

If you have outstanding parking tickets in Prince William County, you soon may be asking, “Dude, where’s my car?”

The House and Senate have both unanimously approved a bill to add the county to the list of Northern Virginia localities authorized to tow or immobilize vehicles with multiple parking violations.

House Bill 692, introduced by Delegate Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, will restore Prince William County’s power to remove or immobilize a vehicle that has three or more outstanding unpaid or otherwise unsettled parking violation notices. The county could do this on private as well as public property.

The county had this authority before 2007, but a bill that rewrote the provision inadvertently omitted Prince William, meaning police lost the authority to remove vehicles left on the county’s streets.

“Nobody wants a junk car sitting in front of their home or near their home or a neighbor’s home,” Miller said.

If the county finds a vehicle with multiple outstanding violations, it will be towed to a temporary storage facility or immobilized – with a wheel lock, or “boot,” for example – so that only an authorized member of law enforcement can move the vehicle.

The official responsible for removing or immobilizing the vehicle must inform its owner as soon as possible about the action. If the vehicle has been immobilized, a notice will be left on the vehicle as well.

The owner will be able to repossess the vehicle by paying the outstanding parking violation notices plus the towing or other costs. Refusal to pay those costs may result in the sale of the vehicle.

Abandoned vehicles have always been an issue in Prince William, but especially since the county inadvertently lost its authority to address the problem in 2007.

“For me, it’s an ongoing battle getting the localities the tools to maintain communities and to keep property values up,” Miller said.

Those tools include a bill Miller successfully sponsored last year to clean up graffiti. That law permits localities to charge property owners for removing graffiti from buildings. The owners have at least 15 days’ notice before they’re fined.

Miller was glad that the Senate last week joined the House in passing his bill to restore Prince William’s power to tow or immobile vehicles with multiple violations.

“I’m glad to have gotten the bill passed, and I’m glad the Senate is supportive of it,” he said.