Arlington County Board members appear disinclined to impose a “second-signature” requirement on property owners having improperly parked vehicles towed from their properties.
A final vote won’t take place until Tuesday evening (Nov. 19), but county staff have recommended that Board members follow the recommendation of the government’s Trespass Towing Advisory Board, which unanimously recommended against a requirement that there be a real-time signature before a tow can take place.
(The “second signature” would have been the real-time signature; the first signature is on the agreement between the property owner and towing company.)
While the General Assembly has given Northern Virginia localities the power to require a second signature, concerns were raised at an October hearing about safety issues when employees of businesses are put in the middle of a tow.
At the same meeting, Del. Alfonso Lopez (D) said concerns were overblown, and that second-signature tows were taking place elsewhere in the commonwealth with no problems.
This is not the first time a second-signature battle has raged in Arlington. In 2016, one was proposed and drew much of the same kinds of criticism as was levied at the proposal in 2o24. In recent years, the General Assembly begun to loosen some of the restrictions it had placed on Northern Virginia on local autonomy over towing.
While the Board is not required to follow recommendations of either the towing body or staff, one Board member privately informed ARLnow on Friday (Nov. 15) that the second-signature proposal had been excised from a package of changes to the county towing ordinance.
Among the proposals still on the table for action on Tuesday:
- Requiring specific written authorization from the property owner or their designee, in addition to an existing contract, before towing.
- Implementing a permitting system for towing operators, with an appeals process.
- Requiring towing operators to provide police with information about who authorized a tow.
- Requiring 48 hours’ notice before towing a vehicle from a multifamily lot based on an expired registration or inspection sticker.
- Increasing the base towing fee from $135 to $150.
- Adding an additional $20 fuel surcharge to each tow with an expiration date of July 1, 2025.
- Increasing the “drop fee” charged vehicle owners to release vehicles before the tow is completed from $10 to $20.
- Implementing regulations for truck signage, smart-payment transactions and timing of load securement.
- Clarifying requirements around vehicle release, receipt production and photographs and other documentary evidence substantiating the reason a vehicle is being towed.
Action taken at the Tuesday meeting will come after a public hearing on the matter that will be held no earlier than 6:30 p.m.
Action on the item had been placed on the County Board’s Nov. 16 consent agenda, designed for issues where there is no controversy. It was an odd choice for an ordinance change that had drawn flak, and the measure was pulled off for consideration at the Board’s Tuesday-evening recess meeting.
