MANKATO — For owners of towed vehicles during the overnight snow emergency in Mankato, the cost of violating the rules will be substantial — triple what it was a dozen years ago.
The snow emergency declared Monday prohibited most on-street parking in Mankato for 12 hours starting at 8 p.m. For those who didn’t get, or ignored, the message, the price to retrieve a towed vehicle from the Affordable Towing impound lot will be $200. And vehicle owners who can’t pay cash will see the price climb to $207 if they need to rely on a credit or debit card.
Violators also receive a parking citation from the city as part of the towing process, which adds $25 more to the financial hit.
The reason for snow emergencies — and the financial pain they bring for those getting towed — is to save money for taxpayers.
“During a snow emergency, there is no parking on city streets to allow for quick and efficient snow removal,” the city’s Monday morning announcement stated.
Plowing around parked cars makes the job more difficult for plow drivers, and it forces them to return repeatedly to the same streets on multiple days to get the roadway cleared curb to curb. Avoiding that requires towing, but Affordable Towing co-owner Bruce Macrafic said the company genuinely prefers if vehicle owners get word of the snow emergency and move their car before the tow trucks arrive.
“This is our least favorite type of work,” Macrafic said. “… But it’s part of what we have to do to help the city keep the streets clear.”
The incentive to heed the rules has grown substantially since 2015, when the basic towing charge for snow emergency violators was $54.25. When taxes and a $10 city administrative fee were added, the total charge climbed to $68.99.
The winter of 2014-15 was the final season operating under Mankato’s longstanding policy of issuing a request for proposals from towing companies and awarding the contract to the company offering the lowest towing rate.
All American Towing had held the contract for 30 years until Affordable Towing — an upstart firm at the time — won the contract in 2006 with a per-tow bid of $50 compared to $72.25 for All American. Five years later, All American won the contract back with that $54.25 bid. And when that contract was set to expire again a half-decade after that, both firms told city officials the bidding process was creating a pricing structure that was artificially low and unsustainable.
City officials agreed to a new approach where the two companies split the contract with each assigned to tow vehicles in half of the town during snow emergencies. The firms also were given leeway in setting towing charges, although the City Council reviewed and approved the contracts and the rates.
At the end of 2019, longtime All American Towing owner Kent Reeves decided to retire and sold the company to Affordable.
Under the latest contract renewal approved by the council in January, the standard snow emergency tow is $150 plus taxes and a city administrative fee that bring the total to $200. The parking citation is collected separately by the city.
Macrafic said the increased charge reflects higher prices for nearly everything involved in towing vehicles and storing them until they’re retrieved by their owners.
“Labor is huge,” he said. “Insurance went way up. The price of equipment almost doubled in the last three or four years.”
The cost of employing drivers is exacerbated by the need to make sure the supply of available trucks exceeds demand. Customers for standard tows, when their vehicle breaks down, expect immediate service, which requires drivers to be available even when multiple tows are requested in a short period of time.
“We’re always planning for the catastrophe,” Macrafic said. “… On a typical day, we’re always overstaffed.”
Overnight, Affordable was set to have all hands on duty from late Monday through the early morning hours of Tuesday. And then staff will be dealing with the vehicle owners at the impound lot, although most of them won’t fit the stereotype for people picking up a towed vehicle, Macrafic said.
“It’s a small percentage that are upset with us. I think most people are upset with themselves that they didn’t get their car moved.”
City officials try to make it as easy as possible for people to avoid getting towed. When a snow emergency is in effect, people who rely on on-street parking can park for free in the city-owned Mankato Place and Civic Center parking ramps. And normal rules prohibiting vehicles from being parked in yards are not enforced.
Notice of snow emergencies typically are issued at least eight hours before they take effect and are announced through local media, on the city Facebook page and through direct email messages to those who sign up for notifications.
Even with all of those efforts, hundreds of Mankatoans aren’t getting the message. From Nov. 30 through Dec. 2, 312 citations were issued and 154 vehicles towed between the citywide snow emergency and the ensuing downtown snow emergency, said Mankato Communications Director Paul David.
A month later, either because people learned their lesson or because college students were gone over the holidays, the numbers dropped. But the totals were still substantial, with 163 citations issued and 110 tows occurring during the snow emergencies running Dec. 29-31.