The National City Council has postponed awarding new towing and impound contracts, voting instead to extend its current agreements and revisit the matter in November after council members raised questions about the two recommended companies, including one that was previously suspended by the city of San Diego.<\/p>\n
The council voted 4-1 on a substitute motion to bring the item back Nov. 17, with Vice Mayor Luz Molina opposed. The city\u2019s existing contracts with Road One Towing and Angelo\u2019s Towing expire Sept. 30, so the council must hold a special meeting before Oct. 1 to approve extensions.<\/p>\n
A city working group of police, finance, legal and administrative staff had recommended three-year contracts with Cortes Towing Enterprises Inc. of San Diego and Tony\u2019s Auto Center Inc. of Chula Vista, according to a staff report. The two ranked first and second among five bidders found to meet requirements, out of seven that applied.<\/p>\n
Under the proposed contracts, the basic tow fee would be $200. The city would collect $150,328 a year in towing program fees, paid equally by the two companies, the report states.<\/p>\n
Much of the discussion centered on Cortes. Councilmember Marcus Bush read from a Sept. 19, 2025, letter from the city of San Diego. The letter identified roughly $279,000\u00a0in unpaid invoices and stated the company had not fulfilled its obligations.<\/p>\n
Owner Johnny Cortes said his office staff had paid towing invoices but not storage invoices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a clerical mistake on our part and San Diego\u2019s part,\u201d Cortes said. He said he let go of the employee responsible, that payments are now sent electronically and that the suspension lasted \u201ctwo, three months.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we still have a contract with the City of San Diego,\u201d Cortes said.<\/p>\n
Sgt. Scott Shanahan, who conducted site inspections and reference checks, said a San Diego police tow administrator told him Cortes had payment issues that were later corrected.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t say anything about a suspension or how much money was owed,\u201d Shanahan said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Ron Morrison said staff should have included the suspension in its report. He said the same applied to Tony\u2019s withdrawal from a San Diego contract in 2023 and to a federal action involving vehicles belonging to deployed service members.<\/p>\n
\u201cA number of things have been brought out that didn\u2019t get disclosed to us by staff,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cThere may be good answers for all of that, but that stuff should be disclosed.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Tony\u2019s representative said the company left the San Diego contract because abandoned motor homes filled its lot. The representative said Tony\u2019s now operates two larger lots.<\/p>\n
Morrison also noted that the recommended firms are the two smallest bidders by equipment, while the incumbents drew \u201cbasically no complaints at all\u201d over about 12 years. The staff report lists eight Cortes trucks and about 10 Tony\u2019s trucks available to the city.<\/p>\n
Angelo\u2019s was disqualified for failing to submit fully executed California Highway Patrol truck inspection forms. Ron Lacey, representing the company, said the forms had been signed by CHP in April and May, but staff requested them from the wrong employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy error was in not knowing the forms specifically,\u201d Lacey said.<\/p>\n
Shanahan said the forms Angelo\u2019s later emailed had been signed by a company employee and dated the day proposals were due. Romero said Angelo\u2019s was the only bidder that did not provide the forms or an explanation, and \u201cyou don\u2019t accept documentation after the fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Manager Doug Schulze defended the evaluation, which was scored by eight working group members.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery towing contract ends up with this type of conversation,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cIt was a fair process. It was an objective process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmember Ditas Yamani\u2019s initial motion to adopt the staff recommendation died for lack of a second. Molina later seconded it when it was restated, but Bush then offered the substitute motion. Bush said the concerns raised about Cortes and Tony\u2019s had been resolved. Bush asked staff to return with outstanding answers to concerns the council had raised.<\/p>\n
Molina opposed the delay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just sounds to me like a lot of additional work, that we\u2019re going to end up arriving at the same decision,\u201d Molina said.<\/p>\n
Schulze warned that the extensions depend on the council convening in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we cannot get a quorum to take action on extending the contracts, we are going to be without towing contracts and that can\u2019t happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National City Council has postponed awarding new towing and impound contracts, voting instead to extend its current…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,181,23,5119,100,74,84,76,75,3055,1696],"class_list":["post-475929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-national-city","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-south-county","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}