O.B. market says tow notice meets the mark
By Michelle Day
Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 10:08 p.m.
Wednesday afternoons mean no parking on Newport Avenue
Four of Star Towing’s tow trucks idled on the same Ocean Beach block last week, waiting for their usual 2:30 p.m. Wednesday go time, when it becomes illegal to park on Newport Avenue between Cable and Bacon streets.
By 3 p.m., the only two vehicles left on the block had been ticketed, loaded onto the trucks and hauled away to make room for the weekly Farmers Market.
Some Ocean Beach residents complain that signs on the block aren’t prominent enough to fairly warn the usual one or two motorists a week that still get towed, which can cost upwards of $300. But the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association, which runs the market, says it’s doing the best it can to remind motorists to move their cars.
In addition to about nine permanent signs, OBMA posts about 25 temporary signs — two in each planter box — the morning of the Farmer’s Market, market manager David Klaman said. He walks around with a megaphone reminding people to move their cars, and asks the lifeguards to make announcements from their stations.
He said he thinks putting the signs up in the morning is plenty of advance notice since cars can only park there for two hours anyway.
Sgt. Gary Mondesir, special events sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, said if a group gets a permit to block a city street for an event, they have to notify drivers at least 72 hours before.
Mondesir has been to the street before the Farmers Market and said OBMA goes beyond what they’re required to do, even going into stores and telling merchants to warn their customers.
OBMA Executive Director Denny Knox said the permanent signs take care of the advance-notice requirement, although some motorists may be leaving their cars after a night at the bars and failing to come get them.
Knox said OBMA tried to hire a company just for the Farmers Market that would tow cars for less money, but the city said that was illegal.
“I don’t know what else we could do,” she said. “We feel terrible about it. We don’t want any cars towed.”
But on Wednesday, some pedestrians watching the truck drivers hook up the vehicles remarked that the warning signs were too small or too infrequent.
“What a total scam,” said Sean Ritz, 40, as he watched truck drivers load the cars onto their trucks.
The Mission Valley resident had been nearby at the beach that day. When he saw the vehicles being towed, he had a moment of panic, worried he might have been parked in the wrong block, although he was not. He said he empathizes with those people, who would come back to the block and not find their cars.
“The signs are not enough,” he said. “They aren’t in every space.”
Klaman, the market manager, thinks people either don’t think to read the parking signs when they park or they just forget to move their cars, but he understands the frustration.
“They yell at me saying, ‘Why did you tow my car?’ or ‘You didn’t have the signs up when I parked,’” he said. “I’ve got horror stories.”
Fox Ludwig, 46, who’s been driving a tow truck for Star for four years, said people have told him they forgot to move their cars or they didn’t think the prohibited parking applied to them, he said
Drivers are paid by the hour instead of commission, so he tries to wait until the last minute to pull someone’s car away, though he has to have the street cleared by 3 p.m.
“We make money, but we don’t want to tow anyone,” he said.
Ocean Beach resident Christina Reilly, 54, had her car towed from the block a few months ago. She said she didn’t see any signs when she parked there at 1:30 p.m. to go to a grocery store about a block away. She returned to find a tow-truck driver hooking up her car to his truck.
Reilly said there needs to be more permanent signs and a more consistent policy on where they are.
“There’s too much room for error,” she said. “It’s just discourteous to the public.”
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