Thursday, December 03, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Don't let tow-tow-tow ruin the season of ho-ho-ho
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
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Has the grinch of downtown Roanoke reared his head once again -- just in time for the Dickens of a Christmas celebration?
Stephen Bradley of Leesburg and Martha Heim of Moneta say absolutely.
Both call themselves victims of a predatory tower who snatched their cars off a private lot faster than Santa operates his Christmas sleigh.
Bradley, who was in town visiting his parents in Fincastle over Thanksgiving, had his car towed last Friday. It was parked for no more than 15 minutes.
"What started as a fun-filled day of visiting the Roanoke Star and driving around your quaint town, we unfortunately leave with the feeling of being ripped off in Roanoke," he wrote in a letter to this newspaper.
"It happened so fast we were sure somebody was watching" he told me Wednesday.
Heim's car was towed Nov. 14, a Saturday, as she and her husband shopped along Market Street. A vehicle belonging to a woman from Lynchburg was towed at the same time, too, she said.
"I didn't expect that to happen here," Heim told me. "We are elderly, law-abiding people. To have someone take $150 of our retirement income -- it's a lot of money."
All of them paid $150 in ransom -- I mean towing charges.
By now you may have guessed that the lot each of them parked in is owned by Roland "Spanky" Macher, the Roanoke businessman and character who has become well-known for his "gotcha" towing practices.
Macher has made headlines numerous times this year for towing (or booting) cars from the 26-space lot on Salem Avenue across from the Taubman Museum of Art, and then charging over-the-barrel drivers a small fortune to get their wheels back.
In July a judge ordered Macher to pay $1,000 to a lawyer whose car was towed off the lot in March. That was because the tow-truck driver had charged the lawyer an illegal $75 "administrative fee."
I visited Macher's three-sided lot Wednesday. Along the back it has three 12-by-18-inch signs warning "Parking by permit only -- Towing enforced" and one 2-foot-by-3-foot sign warning "Private parking -- Towing enforced." Some but not all of the spaces along the other two sides are marked "reserved."
Despite those, it was not necessarily clear that every space on the lot is subject to towing, and that has been a common complaint among drivers whose cars were towed.
After redeeming their cars for $150, Heim and Bradley each received a receipt from Spanky's Towing at an address on Campbell Avenue. It lists a phone number that has been disconnected.
Tuesday I spoke to Macher and was treated to a little bit of the double talk.
He said that Spanky's Towing has a Roanoke business license (which the city Commissioner of the Revenue's office confirmed).
When I asked if he had the required state tower's license, he replied: "Our application is pending, so we're licensed, yeah."
"Doesn't 'application pending' mean you're not licensed yet?" I asked.
"We have a business license," he said.
As of July 1, it is illegal to operate a towing business without a state license, and a violation is a misdemeanor subject to a $1,000 fine.
The Virginia Board for Towing Recovery Operators does not list Spanky's Towing on its Nov. 23, 2009, list of licensed towers in Virginia.
Wednesday, Macher provided copies of an application for a towing license dated Nov. 1. It was unclear Wednesday whether he has been issued a temporary towing permit. Neither Marc Copeland nor Barbara Drudge with that office returned my phone calls Tuesday or Wednesday.
When I told Macher that it sounded to me like he wasn't yet quite licensed by the state to tow, he said the actual towing was done by "another guy who's licensed." In a letter delivered to the paper Wednesday, Macher wrote the tower was using Spanky's Towing receipts because Spanky's gets the towing fees.
He promised to call me back with that other guy's name but later wrote in the letter that his independent contractor does not want his name disclosed.
"The company has only towed a few cars if that over the last several months," he wrote.
With the Dickens of a Christmas celebration set to launch Friday night, parking will be at a premium downtown.
Do yourself a favor and don't park in the lot across from the Taubman Museum of Art. And warn anyone else you see parking there.
We can all help each other out to keep Macher's towing revenues to a minimum.
