news story / By Heidi Walters

Tow Happy

New EPD chief cracking down on overly stationary vehicles

(June 26, 2008)  One Friday morning in mid-May, Bill Hartin was sitting inside his house in central Eureka when he saw a woman get out of a little white car with a City of Eureka logo and walk over to the polished blue ’85 T-bird he and his wife, Arlene, own.

“It was 9:58 in the morning,” says Bill Hartin. He and Arlene are at home this mid-June afternoon, retelling the story. A bright yellow rectangle of paper is on the table between them; it’s a notification that says if they don’t move their car within 72 hours, they’ll get fined $30, and if it’s still not moved within 10 days after that, it’ll be towed.

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“I looked out the window, and she’s over there writing this so-called courtesy notice,” says Bill, his Irish accent expanding with the outrage. “And I waited to see if she was going to come knock on the door, but she didn’t. So I went out there — and I feel kind of bad about this now — and I told her I didn’t think much about that law, and she said she was sorry.”

“That law” is part of Eureka’s vehicle code — and state law — and it says if a car has been parked in the same spot on the street for 72 hours without being moved it can be towed. It doesn’t matter whether or not the car is registered, insured, wanted or operable.

If the car is obviously not in working order — say, up on blocks or with smashed windows, junk piled to the ceiling light and rats running around in it — it’s considered a health and safety hazard and can be towed without notice, says Lt. Murl Harpham, a former Eureka Police Department captain and current public information officer. If it looks operable, it gets the courtesy notice.

While it’s an old law, Harpham says the EPD’s new chief, Garr Nielsen, has ramped up enforcement of it in response to complaints from residents.

“We have several citizens who regularly call us,” Harpham says. “One of them calls himself ‘the real mayor of Eureka’ — Jerry Droz. He turns in a lot of vehicles. He was out of town for a while, so it went way down.”

In the past, the department might mainly respond to specific complaints. But now five of the EPD’s nine PSOs — public services officers — cruise around specifically looking for abandoned or overly-long parked vehicles (amid other duties).

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