VIDEO TO BE POSTED SHORTLY
A hot topic in Commissioners Court Tuesday morning was the new wrecker policy. Since it was implemented on January 1st many problems have surfaced. After speaking with several wrecker company owners and citizens in the county Commissioner Mett’s made a motion to change the policy. After listening to several owners of wrecker companies and talking to police officers in the field over the past few weeks it was definitely something that needed work. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office implemented twenty-four patrol zones last year. The same zone system was used for the seventy-five wrecker companies as of January 1. However, several problems arose almost immediately. From one company getting over twenty tows to others not even getting one in the first week. That was determined to be an issue how the zones were designed. Each company could pay to select zones they wanted. Many chose all twenty-four. On January 1st when the rotation started each zone had the companies in alphabetical order. So if your company started with the letter A you could actually load a vehicle in each zone on the first day. But if the letter Z which put you to the end of the list you may have had to wait a week for the first tow. As time went on the tows began to spread out in each zone but there were still issues. One was a driver has 20 minutes to respond once they were alerted they had a tow and accepted it. If a company was based in Montgomery and a rotation call came in for Porter and that company had selected that zone the driver had 20-minutes to get there or the next rotation wrecker was dispatched. One driver found out the hard way trying to race across the county on SH 99 at 111 miles per hour when he was stopped and arrested by Harris County. Several officers also ran into issues such as having an intoxicated driver stopped and having to wait for 20-minutes only to find out that wrecker did not make it and another had to be dispatched. Besides just the safety issue of the officer on the side of the freeway with the suspect and himself was that intoxication levels drop as time goes by. An intoxicated driver who was stopped and then wait almost an hour before even transporting the suspect could actually be letting him go because he is now under the legal limit. The Sheriff policy does not have to be followed by the municipal departments, some of which are implementing their own policy. Another issue was the software bugs. One the first few days the software would get to the tenth wrecker then start all over even if twenty wreckers were on the list. Several drivers were dispatched to San Jose, California and when they turned it down they went to the bottom of the list. Commissioner Metts also learned that if you had an accident in Kingwood or Porter and the next rotation truck was from Montgomery, your vehicle would go tho their storage lot in Montgomery. Before the policy, many screamed about all the wreckers on a scene. Many times those wreckers also helped block the roadway for crashes to be investigated. A crash on I-45 in The Woodlands required several hours of investigation. With no wreckers, eight patrol units were pulled from patrol to block the roadway that the wreckers were used for prior. Last weekend Montgomery County Precinct 1 Constable publicly praised the wreckers for their help in Willis. On Sunday night a man had decided to jump off the Calvary Road overpass. The freeway and feeders and Calvary Road was closed. Most of the vehicles blocking the roadway were wreckers as negotiators worked to talk the man down.
Tuesday morning several owners said they agree with the four zones but asked the apps for the rotation to be fixed also. Amy Milstead, owner of Milstead Towing said a decline in 60% of business since the start. She also commented about the software issues affecting the rotation system. Clint Bass with Bass towing was dispatched to a call as he sat in Commissioners Court. He turned it down and another wrecker was dispatched to the call. When that wrecker arrived the tow was canceled so that second wrecker was put back on the top of the list. However, even though the vehicle was never towed by anyone Bass since he turned it down was put on the bottom of the list. When he called the support line he was given run around and told to email the Sheriff’s Office. TJ Knox owns several businesses in East Montgomery County. He told the court that in December his company loaded sixty-two vehicles but after the rotation started he loaded only seventeen in January. He said he lost almost seventy-five percent of his business overnight. He attributed most of that to the fact that they had competed against up to a dozen companies in East Montgomery County and that number is now thirty-one companies. He noted some of the zones waited several weeks for the first tow. Charlie Miller said he too has lost seventy-five percent of his business since this was implemented. Adamicks Wrecker who signed only for the zone in Willis has only loaded four vehicles since January 1. She said she supports the four zones. Russell Schoonover with Texan Towing told Commissioners he was in favor of this rotation system when it was discussed last year. Some agencies and officers are still chipping for scenes if it is a road hazard. He said last week his driver was involved in six different scenes where officers had wreckers chip for vehicles before that driver ever came up for rotation in fourteen hours. One issue he said he found is drivers accepting the tow and not making it on time and another truck is dispatched. The first driver then goes to the top of the list as that officer is now waiting over twenty minutes. But instead of waiting for another wrecker, that officer has the wreckers who happen to be on the scene chip for it. The issue he said he found was the driver who did not make it in the twenty-minutes had not even left his couch but yet now he is top of the list again and the officer is waiting for a wrecker that was never coming. Schoonover also agrees the four districts would work.
Commissioner Metts along with Commissioner Riley proposed implementing four tow zones. Those zones would require the wrecker to have a storage lot in the zone and the vehicle being towed not to leave the zone. He was quite upset when he found citizens’ vehicles towed completely out of the area. He said he felt it was better for safety with four zones and drivers would not have an issue getting there within the allotted time. Sheriff Henderson told Commissioners that to change from twenty-four zones to four would require up to possibly six months of work by GIS personal in the IT Department. Judge Keough immediately realized the burden that this would be put on the companies overtime for the maps to be redone. He said he was inclined to suspend the ordinance until the maps could be done. Commissioner Riley agreed as did Commissioner Metts. However, Commissioner Noack was against it. Commissioner Metts, Commissioner Walker, Commissioner Riley and Judge Keough all moved to suspend the ordinance until the maps could be redrawn. However, after consulting the County Attorney they learned that the Agenda called for changing it on suspending it. It was then decided that another meeting of Commissioners meeting would be held with the wording on the agenda to suspend the ordinance. Due to the law, it had to be posted at least 72-hours prior to the meeting. Judge Keough has now called for a Special Meeting on Friday at 1:30 pm to suspend the rotation ordinance and go back to the chip method until the new maps could be done.
