Phil’s Towing closes, citing street-cleaning test that gives cars tickets before impounding them (updated)
Phil’s Towing closes Friday after nearly 40 years in business, and owners blame Cambridge’s one-year street cleaning pilot program that began this month with the goal of reducing the financial impact of towing on residents.
Each street in Cambridge is cleaned once a month from April through December, weather permitting. Until this season, residents were expected to move their vehicles from the side of the street being swept or risk being towed; during the pilot, which began April 3, residents are ticketed instead of towed if they don’t move their cars.
The city announced the pilot in January. By February, staff at Phil’s Towing were sending letters to the commissioner of Public Works, the Cambridge Police Department and other municipal offices to try to understand what it meant for their business. “The city never contacted us, notified us, nothing,” manager Billy Megan said.
An email was left with a city spokesperson Thursday after business hours. This post will be updated with a reply.
Street cleaning operation was about 60 percent to 65 percent of Phil’s Towing revenue, and though he worked with Harvard, MIT, Trinity Property Management, Gravestar, the Cambridge Crossing development in North Point and property owner and developer Gerald Chan, “my business was catered to the city of Cambridge,” owner Phil Bard said. “You need an anchor account. And my anchor account was that street-cleaning program, and I built my business around that and that provided with stability.”
By the end of March, Phil’s Towing decided to “cease” towing in Cambridge, since without information from City Hall “we didn’t know what we were doing,” Megan said.
Every year for more than 30 years, Bard said he has donated vehicles to the Cambridge fire and police departments for different types of training, and now will no longer be able to provide these resources to the community.
“This year, I sent three cars over to the fire academy in Brookline for the use of the Jaws of Life to train these firemen to get familiar with the equipment they use,” said Bard, a fourth-generation Cantabrigian whose family members were firefighters, police officers, barbers and nurse’s aides at the old Cambridge City Hospital and has gone on to sponsor baseball and softball teams and be a reliable donor to city charities. “These are the things that people don’t see. They don’t see the behind-the-scenes things that I’ve done for the city.”
Expensive business, valuable land
Residents who don’t move their car will be ticketed $50 for their first two offenses; the vehicle will be towed on the third offense. The tickets, which are up from $30, aim to drastically reduce towing and impound bills: A City Council policy order estimated $100 for an initial towing fee, a $30 ticket from the Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department, a holding charge of $35 a day from the impound lot and a $25 bill in the mail if the vehicle is not picked up within 48 hours.
People also sometimes have to pay to get to the impound lot – maybe a ride share or taxi – to pay fees and get their car back.
The towing company and lot was at 333 Webster Ave., Wellington-Harrington, a 6,032-square-foot lot on the city line. It’s an industrial area not far from Somerville’s Union Square, which is being transformed into high-rise residences, labs and offices by a master developer around a new green line MBTA station.
Quinton Zondervan, whose policy order led to the street-cleaning pilot, said that the value of the land leased by Phil’s – owned by a Laconia, New Hampshire, real estate trust – suggested to him that the towing company was unlikely to stay much longer anyway. “The land is too valuable for that,” Zondervan said.
“I hope to see affordable housing built there under the new proposed Affordable Housing Overlay, which contemplates more height in this area, but unfortunately it is likely to turn into another biolab, as the council rejected my recent proposal to limit new biolab development in this area,” Zondervan added.
One tow company remains
Bard and Megan don’t see Phil’s Towing coming back, no matter how the city’s test goes.
“I sold all the trucks, laid off all the employees – seven Cambridge guys worked here for nine years in the city for Phil’s Towing, and now they’re all out of jobs, all Cambridge residents,” Megan said.
At 63, Bard said he’s in good shape and expects to have a second act in Cambridge – after he “takes a breather” to let go of towing, which he”s done since he was 19, and a company he built from scratch that allowed him only a pair of one-week vacations in nearly four decades. What he does next won’t be towing. “That part of my life’s behind me,” Bard said.
Phil’s had a contract with the city that guaranteed approximately 3,000 cars a year expiring Aug. 21, Megan said, which was renewed from years prior. The company’s 2014-2015 street-cleaning season contract became public in 2016 and outlined projected tows for three towing companies — Phil’s, Pat’s Towing at 505 Medford St., Somerville, and B&B Towing at 50 Mooney St., in the Cambridge Highlands.
B&B manager Mike Sorrentino said his company agreed to the same city contract terms as Phil’s and has seen a decrease in towing since the pilot began. Since Phil’s went out of business, B&B has almost been able to supplement the loss of street cleaning tows by covering the entirety of Cambridge.
Still, Sorrentino estimates the business is losing 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles a year because of the pilot. “We concentrated on street cleaning every day five days a week for nine months,” Sorrentino said. “The loss of income is going to affect us big time.”
Prediction comes true
City councillor Paul Toner predicted during debate over the street-cleaning test that it might shut down the city’s towing companies. He was not surprised Thursday when the rumors of Phil’s closing were confirmed.
“My concern was exactly this is, of local working-class people losing jobs as a result of a policy that in my opinion was unnecessary,” Toner said.
While there was testimony during those meetings about the inconvenience of having cars towed, there was also an “outpouring” of residents who said that they wanted to keep towing because “they didn’t see it as a major issue and they want to clean streets. And, you know, sadly, people are now going to see real job loss as a result of this,” Toner said, with the added risk that drivers whose cars get towed may soon have to go out of the city to get them back.
“We may be looking for a tow company to service the city again if we go back to traditional street cleaning,” Toner said.
This post as updated April 14, 2023, with comments and information from Phil Bard and Mike Sorrentino and additional comments from councillor Quinton Zondervan.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
I would love to know who continues to vote for Zondervan. I am not even talking about his plan to stop towing. The comment about the property being worth a lot of money and that they probably would have ceased anyways is 100% not a comment that any public official should be making. That is extremely out of line. It is not his job to speculate or comment on a company’s future in a public forum.
The best part of this article is the realization that we are allowed to swear on Cambridge Day. That’s fucking awesome!
The second best part is how the shitty of Cambridge managed to increase its own income by raising the cost of the tickets while still being able to virtue signal its love of the common man,uuuuuh I mean men and women…uhhhh I mean…creatures who may or may not identify as human.
Having to fire employees and close down due to an arbitrary change in government policy is just a sad note for this business. I’m not sure many on the council understand the nature of causation. That being said this new program is really annoying. Did they change the message that goes out in the am for street cleaning? It used to be a loud very pronounced voice now it sounds like a whisper and the message is too low to hear.
Amazing!
Not even started yet and 40yr old business Poof gone! Maybe Phils can be “Phils bike lane paint” since it’s peeling up the pavement with it. After only a yr on the north cam quick destruction I mean build.
Wow so when the city realizes that drains are much more frequently clogged, rats are really thriving and a general feeling of street cleaning oh well I’ll pay the 50bucks. Get ready cause when the city backtracks and try’s to get another tow co the pricing is gonna look a lot lot different. Just stunning how this well oiled machine runs.
Wow it’s fun to see small business (EHChocolatier) after small business (Phil’s towing not haircuts thank goodness) go bust in the same week!
Go woke go broke!
The idea behind contracting (vs. providing services in-house by the city) is presumably that you get some economies of scale, and/or access to specialized skills that the city doesn’t need continuously. But if the contractor is basically only doing this one contract, it feels like it’s unlikely to be any more efficient than just having the city do the work itself. Maybe they can hire workers for cheaper than the city would, but then there’s overhead of owner’s profit.
So if the ticketing experiment fails it seems like the city might be better off just doing the towing itself, rather than putting it out to bid.
And, we can expect more of these things. The City Council doesn’t know what the word reality means. People losing jobs; they say ” what’s the big deal.” Dirty streets… “what’s the big deal. We have to take care of those residents who can’t be bothered to move their cars when street cleaning happens.” That’s where our first allegiance is. How sad that this is their mind set. And Zondervan’s comment was despicable. But, what can you expect from a “Democratic Socialist.”
And you know what? These same people, at least most of them, will be re-elected this November.
Nine city councilors, all at large, answering to no one. Toner appears to be the only realistic one, on this issue and others.
Run Pat Run!
The city has so much going for it. The cc shoots itself in the foot time after time.
I know I know the “experts” are in charge. 🙃
Good riddance. Now they can go get a real job instead of gouging their neighbors. Love this move from the city
You want to see how this city runs. Here is a small example, relatively insignificant, but it shows how inept this city is. And can we hope that history teaching in our public schools doesn’t allow for these mistakes. Do they even. teach American history anymore? Civics?
On April 5th.,the daily City of Cambridge email was about Representative Clark presenting a citation to a former veteran. Wonderful story, particularly for those of us who are veterans.
Here was the headline: “Lifelong Cambridge Resident and U.S. Army Veteran Honored with Army of Occupation and National Defense Service Medals.”
And here was one of the sentences that the city wrote:” Mr. Wing Wong joined the Army at age 19 in August 1948. Notable events during his time of service were the Korean War, the Berlin Blockade and Airlift, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Nuremberg Trials. After being Honorably Discharged on June 17, 1952,…”
Wait a second! Does the person at City Hall who wrote this know anything about history? Might that person have bothered to see when the building of the Berlin Wall occurred? If Mr. Wing Wong was discharged in 1952, how could the events of his time have included the Berlin Wall which was built in 1961.
As I said, a very minor thing. But, these are the same people who are going to help plan municipal broadband? God help us.
@PatrickWBarrett for what it’s worth, I’m certainly still hearing the same loud recorded message as previous years.
Secondarily, I actually agree with with many of the points here on both sides but I think it’s worth pointing out that this new policy is 2 weeks into its existence and they’re blaming the demise of the business on it. Either that’s not true and just a convenient scapegoat (seems likely), or it’s just a horrible business model (also seems likely).
Hopefully this works out in the medium term, the streets are clean, everyone is happy and we forget about this fun little debate within a year.
cbh17 I think we can all agree we hope it’s all good 3 6 12 months from now.
However the reality is we the city, business owners and residents are now in only a few weeks into the “test” and one of the two tow cos is gone.
Maybe the “test” could have been a “test” say for 3mo and still hold on to the tow co and evaluate it. It’s the entire city!
My goodness if the streets aren’t clean and various street drains are clogged up and police are ticketing triple, quadruple the amount of cars with the sweepers swerving in and out – what have we done!
Umm Phil’s towing its Quinton would you please rehire everyone and give us the same rate? No. Oh ok well I’m sure the other co will not take advantage of the naïveté.
Rats 🐀 1
Cambridge city council 0
I second the remarks from @cbh17 — for what it’s worth, I do think we need to be mindful about how policy changes impact businesses. But to suggest that 2 weeks into April they’ve been forced under completely strains credulity and is an expedient excuse. They’re sitting on a gold mine of valuable land which doesn’t really make sense as a tow yard anymore. And it’s just bellyaching about not getting notice from the city; they’ve been clearly lobbying extensively with Paul Toner on this.
Love towing or hate it (but really, who loves it?) we have to be realistic about whether these sorts of jobs programs are what we want to prioritize with our city funds and rules. Towing does have negative impacts in resident lives. People who may forget once can be responsible for hefty fees and could be late for work at the jobs they need to survive. Those residents are losing money while the tow truck companies are gaining it (with guaranteed minimums.) So I think it’s also okay for us to shift priorities before we move forward forever with the status quo. Should the city be providing a guarantee / jobs program for something people in the city don’t really want?
Is individual responsibility a sign of “privilege” now? These city “councilors” are desperately virtue signaling although without support of the 60+ percent of Cambridge residents who don’t bother to vote. Speak up please, vote or lose the right to complain!
Another move by the City where “ordinary people” lose by their efforts. Small businesses and restaurants along Mass Ave from the lack of parking. The elderly and disabled from the lack of parking. Increasing traffic on residential side streets to make Garden Street one way. Trying to slip in ridiculous fees for condos that aren’t green and overlooking the wealthy in single family homes. I think too many of us for too long haven’t looked carefully enough at City politics. The low taxes lulled us into complacency. If the same people continue to be re-elected, Cambridge will be home to those in subsidized housing and the rich. The rest of us will be pushed out.
Too many folks seem to decide that they know what the new policy is going to do 2 weeks into the program. I think a lot of them seem to have a dislike against one specific city council member and are using this as a scapegoat issue in their feedback here.
Considering he has sold off the assets of the company this quickly, we can assume that with the developer in the area snatching up land that the leased property was already in the eyes of said developer before the policy and the policy was the ‘last straw’ event for the company.
I was always surprised that Cambridge had gone to contractors like this and didn’t have their own trucks, drivers and impound yards like some other cities do.
Using 3 different companies under contract with such seems unusual to me… my grandfather was first a tow truck driver and then years later a mechanic for one of the other cities in the state (a position he held for 35 or 40 years) keeping their fleet of DPW vehicles, fire, police and tow trucks operational.
That city also went to contractors instead of city owned operations and in the end it cost them a LOT more money than running their own tow trucks, repair garage etc. It also meant the cost to the people who suffered getting towed a lot more money (a much greater amount than here in Cambridge).
Street Cleaning Towing, from my observations, primarily have affected people who can ill afford the tickets, and often happens to those who are unaware (the round up of student vehicles at the start of each new school year for a couple of months in my neighborhood in Cambridge was quite obviously a ‘tax on students’).
@Joyce, yes the real victims here are the “ordinary people”… and not the owner of Phil’s Towing who profited off of resident misery.
Maybe the biggest victim will be Paul Toner who won’t get his beak wet with as much campaign money? Could that $1700 from the owner possibly be why Paul Toner took this big stand for towing? Or do you both just really care deeply about clean streets?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eEKFvC0l2aAgyzTDSRMvUd5nccDXi90z9qRjy8rfPFw/edit?usp=sharing
@joyce
You said:”I think too many of us for too long haven’t looked carefully enough at City politics. The low taxes lulled us into complacency. If the same people continue to be re-elected, Cambridge will be home to those in subsidized housing and the rich. The rest of us will be pushed out.”
Exactly. And yet only 30-35 % of the registered voters bother to vote in our municipal elections.
Cambridgegent – First of all I love the anonymous accusations. Those donations are public record and I have known Phil Bard for many years. He was supporting my campaigns long before this issue ever arose.
If you paid attention to the debate at city council you would know that the City Manager and DPW came back with a report that said by eliminating towing we would be spending more money to clean the streets and would need to use noisy leaf lowers to get around cars and it was likely we would not be able to get our streets as clean as we do with the towing program.
As a Councillor, I don’t know why we should spend more money to get less clean streets while subjecting people to more noise from leaf blowers. In addition, the report also found the vast majority of people who have been towed were towed once and never again.
Oh give us a break. Bard is sitting on a parcel of land now worth a fortune, so he’s selling it and sailing off into retirement.
The rest is just a long-time townie taking a potshot at the liberals governing Cambridge. Maybe the new towing policy is right, maybe it’s wrong– but have no illusions about what’s really happening here. Bard is cashing out, pure and simple.
Street cleaning towing was just a make-work program. Lets give the new policy a chance. Fines may discourage violations as effectively as towing.
Correct Paul it’s almost a right of passage living in Cambridge to get towed once or twice.
Somerville doesn’t tow – has anyone checked how clogged backed up the storm drains are there? Well I have back when this joke by the “experts” was proposed. Big issues with storm drains clogged there but whatever Cambridge has plenty plenty of money to waste.
The police will most likely be relieved by the parking dept ticket brigade. Can’t wait to see the leaf blower and parking brigades coming down the streets day after day. What a great use of precious “labor”.
It’s so fun to hear “well if it doesn’t work the city can buy tow trucks and hire train provide benefits for a new tow co”.
It’s akin to the city replacing grubhub Uber eats etc with city employees. Shoot maybe the city can open up and staff 10 or 20 new restaurants to replace all the bankrupt ones that have left with their hair on fire.
This is the chaos when not many adults are in charge and not many vote as they’ve given up to the stupidity.
I always look deeper into the motives of said councilor. He is not big on consequences for his policy orders. They are broad brush ideologically based. His explanation of the land being too expensive and they would have closed anyway negates the impact on blue collar workers. It is a hand-wave with a “let them eat cake” flair. When someone challenged him on pushing for 100% electrical retrofitting for older steam heat buildings which would cost middle class owners thousands of dollars and possible displacement, his comment was “I would have thought you’d be happy that government was so forward-looking”. Again, what about details?.
Most of this council is a bunch of thinly strung together people who don’t play well with each other. And they each have their support posse to call to fill the chambers. PEOPLE, VOTE!!
There are so many overlapping consequential policy orders coming fast and furious that no one has done the deep dive to see what is feasible. ruling by fear and insinuation.
This council is so dysfunctional and self-serving. And if you wanted to educate car owners, let them get towed once or twice. Maybe the city can create a fund to subsidize the most impacted. It’s ironic that these people need and use their cars, yet have parking taken away from them.
Dear RadioFreeMatt: Again I love the cheap shots from anonymous posters but the facts are that Phil does not own the land. He rents it. He will not be making any profit off any future sale. But I guess only a long time townie takes the time to check the facts before posting.
@Paul, I’m not sure how knowing Phil for a long time makes protecting his business interests better… it is still fair to ask whether it is the best public policy. And maybe it is, maybe it isn’t… it’s only 2 weeks in to the trial, so we don’t really know if it is good or bad. Either way, it would make it easier to be sure it’s just public interest if there were no other personal or financial interests at play.
Campaign contributions are public for a reason. Residents have a right to know whose interests are being represented when councilors make decisions. It doesn’t mean anything bad is going on, but with a quarter million dollars of campaign donations over the years, residents are smart to scrutinize a little.
In a case like this, residents do suffer from the tows. I think it’s fair to consider whether these business owners, or construction unions outside the city stand to benefit more than residents from policies that affect us.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eEKFvC0l2aAgyzTDSRMvUd5nccDXi90z9qRjy8rfPFw/edit
Dear Cambridge Gent:
I am quite proud of the union support i have received. As a former teacher union president I worked closely with these organizations in the past and yes, they know i will push for good wages and union benefits . In fact if you check the OCPF accounts of pretty much every other Councillor you will see similar donations and i think we are pretty much in agreement in our support for unions.
If you look at my entire OCPF donor list you will see I have been fortunate to receive donations big and small from unions, retirees, friends, educators, businesses, lawyers. and organizations from all over the city, state and country over the years. I am proud of the support I have received from a broad group of people and I make my decisions based on the facts presented.
In this case we may be only two weeks into the pilot. Maybe it won’t be so bad but based on the report and data presented by city staff and the feedback we received from residents before the vote I don’t think it was necessary to change this policy. 3 other Councillors agreed with me. Unfortunately whether you like Phils towing or not there are now several people who have lost good paying jobs as a result of this policy decision.
Don’t worry Mr Toner, the city can always add 5-10 people onto the payroll to restart the towing if it doesn’t work!
No biggie don’t care so much it’s only the cleanliness of the city and people getting fired.
Up up and away for jokeville!
Good f’ing riddance. Phil lined his pockets for 40 years with a sweetheart deal from his friends at city hall and now wants sympathy because average residents are being protected from overpriced, predatory impounding of their property? Real small businesses work hard to earn their customers business. He got 60-65% of his revenue gifted to him. Be grateful you got away with it for that long, Phil.
As for Paul Toner, what a hilariously, strange stance for anyone soliciting votes to take as the decision benefits literally everyone with a vehicle aside from the 9 people laid off by this closure. Blaming it on added costs is ridiculous when you consider how wealthy the city is, versus how much $200 hurts the average driver after a ticket and tow. The real laugh though is to try and cite the potential disturbance of leaf blowers? Seriously? Paul, do you even live in Cambridge? With this never ending construction there hasn’t been peace and quiet in Cambridge for a decade, and surely won’t be for another decade. Leaf blowers are the last of our worries.
Bottom line: Phil and Paul don’t give a shit about residents. Money, money, money!
Madejaded:
Again, very brave, uninformed, potshot anonymous post. I have lived here my entire life and am lucky enough to live in my great grandfathers small but simple home. I stand by my original position along with my three colleagues and the many residents who wrote into city council in support of keeping our towing policy as it was in order to clean our streets. We will see how the pilot program turns out.
This is highly entertaining. I wish I could post that Michael Jackson popcorn gif. Just old-time “machine” democrats upset some towing company (with union jobs no less!) can’t continue rent seeking on the public’s dime arguing with “progressives” that can’t fathom their poorly thought out plan had real world consequences. Keep going folks. This horrible “neo-lib” is loving it
there is a noise ordinance against leaf blowers if anyone is interested not only because of noise decibel but they blow debris and irritants into the air causing health problems. Kinda like a gas stove in theory. Also, what if people followed the law to begin with and moved their car for street cleaning. That would solve everything. But they have no place to put the cars off the street because off-street parking has been eliminated and meters has taken spaces. Hmmm… The suggestion of street cleaning an hour later after everyone has left seems to be a good one. (although they don’t clean in places until 9:30-10:00). just follow the law and move.
And with that snarky attitude, Mr Toner, I’ll remember never to vote for you again– which I did, because I wanted a townie like myself on the council. I see I was wrong.
The best part of all this is how delicious the popcorn is while reading the comments….
To even it out Paul I’ll make sure you get at least two #1’s this year.
In other news having to use leaf blowers to supplement this bad idea is just Monty Python levels of absurd. The council broke something that was working quite well. They seem to have a knack for that.
Same #1s for Mr Toner from PRC!
The popcorn will really be poppin butter and salted when the leaf blowers start humming all over the city. Gotta love the smell of pollen in the mornings!
🍿 🍿 🍿
Paul’s got multiple votes from this house!
“As a Councillor, I don’t know why we should spend more money to get less clean streets while subjecting people to more noise from leaf blowers. In addition, the report also found the vast majority of people who have been towed were towed once and never again.” AMEN