COUNTYWIDE : Proposal Targets Abandoned Cars

About 43,000 times a year, Orange County residents ask authorities to remove abandoned cars that often lie like beached whales on front lawns, on streets and in open fields, according to a new county report.

Cities often are slow to investigate the complaints, transportation officials said, because of the high staff costs involved. The local jurisdictions spend about $1.4 million annually in staff costs alone just to investigate the claims.

So, taking advantage of a new state law, Orange County Transportation Authority board members voted 10 to 1 Monday to create a new Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Authority that will reimburse cities and the county for the costs of removal--with the money to come from a new, $1 surcharge to be added to motorists’ annual motor vehicle registration renewal fees.

The plan must still be approved by the California Highway Patrol, at least four of the five members of the Board of Supervisors and a majority of the city councils representing most of the county’s population. The surcharge would not take effect until some time in 1992, according to Bill Madison, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Although a study commissioned by the OCTA found that some cities have a disproportionate share of abandoned vehicles, the report doesn’t name them. But transportation officials said densely populated, low income areas of Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Westminster have the biggest problem.

According to the study, there were about 37,330 calls about abandoned vehicles on public property investigated by local authorities in 1990 and an additional 5,557 calls involving such vehicles on private property.

On average, one out of five abandoned vehicles are towed, the study showed. Law enforcement officials usually are able to get property or vehicle owners to take care of the matter, but only after investing hours of staff time.

Currently, Orange County’s vehicle owners already pay a $1 surcharge for freeway emergency call boxes and a $2 surcharge for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, due to increase a dollar in 1992 and another dollar in 1993. The basic registration fee is $23, due to increase to $28 in January, plus a tax based on 2% of the vehicle’s value, which declines on an 11-year depreciation schedule.

Referring to the abandoned vehicle surcharge as “another tax” that could stir voter passions, county Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, an OCTA board member, cast the only vote against establishing the new program here.

Todd Murphy, OCTA’s special projects manager, said the state previously paid for abandoned vehicle removal directly through a special fund that was discontinued five years ago. “Without this (the $1 surcharge program) there would be little incentive for cities to make the effort to remove abandoned vehicles,” he said.

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Michael Lammers explained that the costs are mostly in staff hours.

“We have to mark the vehicle and come back in just three days,” he said. “The towing and storage fees are paid by the owner of the vehicle if he or she should decide to pick it up. If not, the towing company will place a lien on the vehicle and sell it--usually for scrap.”

On freeways, the CHP can order a vehicle towed if it has been abandoned for as few as four hours.

“Most of the time we don’t go out and mark vehicles just for the sake of marking vehicles,” Lammers added. “Most of the time it’s at the request of a neighbor who has noticed that the vehicle has been there for some time.”

A spokesman for Blue Bird Towing, one of several firms that contracts with Santa Ana to remove abandoned vehicles, said the towing fees are about $75 and storage is usually about $15 a day.

The city doesn’t pay those fees, so the firm tries to recover them from owners who show up looking for their cars or by selling the vehicles to a wrecking yard.

“Usually these cars are already wrecked and have nothing on them--they’re stripped,” said the spokesman. “Some of them have been used in crimes and were just left in whatever neighborhood the crooks decided to drop them.”