Troy Needs a New Towing Law

January 14, 2025

Many residents have reached out to speculate that Troy has been aggressively towing vehicles downtown to generate new revenue. While Troy’s towing fee revenue did increase by 33% last year, the City also appears to have lost four dollars in parking tickets for every dollar that it gained from towing administrative fees. That this revenue strategy could turn out to be self-defeating does not necessarily preclude it from being real. Whatever the motivation may have been, the City should not resume its towing agenda for a litany of practical, financial, and legal reasons, the most significant of which is that towing fees very straightforwardly exceed what the law expressly allows.

Another good reason to cut back is that the City’s justification for the act of towing may also be unlawful. This is because Troy’s towing authority comes from §273-1A of the Troy City Code:

“The Chief of Police and/or the Chief Fiscal Officer of the City shall have the power and authority to provide for the removal, immobilization and storage of vehicles parked in violation of any statute, ordinance, rule or regulation and of vehicles on which there are outstanding traffic warrants or fines for parking violations in excess of $50.”

Troy believes that this language authorizes them to tow, boot, and store any vehicle parked in violation of any statute, ordinance, rule, or regulation. Troy also believes that this language authorizes them to tow, boot, and store any vehicle on which there are outstanding traffic warrants or fines for parking violations in excess of $50. We believe this says that a vehicle must both be parked in violation of any statute, ordinance, rule or regulation and have outstanding traffic warrants or fines for parking violations in excess of $50 for the City to be authorized to tow, boot and store it.

“And”, “or”, and “and/or” provide the basis for our disagreement. “And” is conjunctive, which means that everything must be true. In this sentence, it is used for things like “removal, immobilization and storage of vehicles” because all three things must (and do) happen. When the law wants to permit at least one of several things, it instead uses the disjunctive “or” (such as in “statute, ordinance, rule or regulation”).

The City justifies its towing spree by understanding the word “and” to really mean “or,” but only in one of its applications – between “vehicles parked in violation of any statute, ordinance, rule or regulation” and “of vehicles on which there are outstanding traffic warrants or fines for parking violations in excess of $50.” We feel that the City clearly understood what “or” meant when they created this law and should have used it if that is what it wanted to say. If ever in doubt, the City could have even hedged its bets with the inclusive disjunction “and/or” as it does in the very same sentence when granting power and authority to either or both the Chief of Police and the Chief Fiscal Officer. 

Whatever the intent of the law may have originally been, reasonable people can clearly disagree about the meaning its language conveys today. The Mantello administration can eliminate this ambiguity by introducing new, clearer language that cannot be so easily misunderstood or misused to disrupt working peoples’ lives. We strongly recommend that Troy suspends its towing downtown until major legal concerns have been resolved.