The $15,000 contract worth millions: Mike Harting raises questions about St. Pete’s towing bid

St. Petersburg is changing towing companies for the first time in 32 years. Council member Mike Harting wants to know how the decision was made.

The city’s contract with Tri-J Co. Towing and Recovery expires Sept. 30. Harting told colleagues at the end of Thursday’s City Council meeting that the administration plans to give the work to another company and that Council will not vote on it. Drivers, he said, will pay more per tow.

“I’m going to do something I haven’t done in my tenure. I’m going to talk a little bit about something that I don’t know enough about,” Harting said. “Normally, I know nothing about it. Now I know a little bit.”

“I bring this up for just the attention of my fellow council members, and I bring it up without enough knowledge because it seems to be somewhat time sensitive.”

“For the past 32 years, the city has used a company called Tri-J,” Harting said. “They provide services, the tow truck services for our heavy fleet vehicles, for sanitation, for fire. They handle all callouts for the police departments. They provide crashed vehicles for fire for training, and I believe they also work with parking management, towing, putting the things on that make your cars not drivable.”

Tri-J has been in business since 1976 and operates from 125 19th St. S. The Police Department’s general order on towing names the company. The tow receipt “shall be provided to the Tri-J driver or tow operator at the time of the pick-up.”

“The contract itself, as I understand it, is not really that valuable to the city,” Harting said. “I think it’s been $60,000 in the past. Now it’s worth about $15,000. But the value in the contract, as I understand it, is in the services that the citizens or the insurance companies then pay for.”

“Right, the police have an accident that they respond to. They call in a tow truck service, and those cars are towed, and the insurance companies or the individuals pay for it, and that contract, from what I understand, is possibly in the millions, or that value is in the millions of dollars.”

The city pays the contractor to tow city vehicles. Drivers whose cars are towed at police direction pay the contractor, at rates capped by Pinellas County. The cap applies inside city limits.

“Inside of that, the contract is based on the amount of money the city pays, somehow, in the final determination,” Harting said. “And as a result, folks who use the towing services that come through the city, instead of being charged $130 for that towing service, which would have been the agreement with the first company, they’ll now pay $150. So we’re going to be charging the citizens more as a result of our relationship with the tow truck company, and this is thousands of cars a year.”

The county set the maximum police-directed tow rate for a standard car at $130 in December 2019, TBN Weekly’s Suzette Porter reported. It was the first increase since 2000. On June 16 the county raised it to $153, plus $5 a mile, $30 a day for storage, and a $60 administrative fee after 24 hours.

The $130 is the old cap. The $150 is $3 under the new one. A city contract can require less than the county maximum. Harting says the price drivers pay did not figure into the award.

“The way that the process was handled in the beginning, instead of as an RFP, it was what is referred to in our organization as direct bid, and it went out one way, and the bid process went forward,” Harting said.

“And again, this part I’m not completely clear on, but from what I understand, Tri-J was the winner of that bid process, and then that bid process was changed, and we culled out part of it, the larger vehicles, or what they’re referred to as the large vehicles, the fire trucks and the sanitation vehicles, and as a result, when the numbers were reprocessed, the other company won. They’re going to be awarded the contract.”

The city’s procurement code bars changes to bid provisions after bids are opened if the change would prejudice fair competition. It also bars dividing a purchase to get under a dollar threshold. Whether the heavy-vehicle work came out before bids were due or after they were opened was not addressed Thursday.

Harting said the contract falls under the threshold for Council approval.

“I think historically, and I’m glad to be wrong on this, I think historically, this has come to Council,” he said. “As I understand it, it’s less than $100,000. Now it’ll be much less than $100,000. Now it’s not going to come to Council. I have been told that this definitely won’t be coming to Council. It possibly was coming in the middle of October.”

Under the code, the Mayor approves contracts of $100,000 or less. Council approves anything larger. The figure is what the city pays, not what the contractor collects from drivers. By that measure the towing contract is worth $15,000.

“In the end, the relationship that we had with Tri-J, if that goes away, that company goes away,” Harting said. “So the company will just cease to exist. This seems to be a majority of their business. I don’t know what to do with all the information that I’ve just given you.”

Harting asked whether the award could be held until Council learns more.

An administrator said he had “cursory information,” that the process was worked out with the Police Department, and that Harting would meet with staff Friday.

A procurement staffer said the city used an invitation to bid for towing before 2021 and an RFP in 2021. A bid is for a commodity, the staffer said. An RFP is for a scope still being defined.

Asked why the city ran an RFP in 2021 if towing is a commodity, staff said they would look into it.

Council member Gina Driscoll questioned whether the department director and the procurement director understood that changing the method would put a local business out of business. “This doesn’t sound like a case where somebody can just say, well, rules are rules,” she said. She asked that the City Attorney’s Office sit in on Harting’s meeting.

Council Chair Lisset Hanewicz asked the administration to send Council the invitation to bid, all bids received, and the 2021 RFP.

The city posts its solicitations on its procurement portal. The administration has not named the winning bidder.

— Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team.