Everyone knows about their particular area's informal used-car lots:
The shopping center parking lot, the vacant parking strip, the weed patch where Joe puts his 1979 Nova and Charlie his 1974 Vega ("Like New!") with a "For Sale" sign stuck in the window.In Bountiful, the biggest such spot lately has been the parking lot of Hardee's, now out of business, on the corner of 500 South and 200 West. It has become so popular with ad hoc used-car salesmen that folks driving by are able, at times, to pick among 25 cars on display.
The site is ideal for selling - high traffic, lots of movement, lots of people. But the property owner doesn't want the cars there, and city officials don't particularly care for them either (unless, perhaps, they're in the market themselves, but none of them are fessing up to that).
The problem for the city was it didn't have an ordinance that specifically prohibited the practice. So, after a couple of years of stop-and-go and back-and-forth and discussion and postponement and revisitation, the City Council Wednesday finally adopted an ordinance prohibiting hawking automobiles on private property without the consent of the owner.
Punishment: summary towing. No notification and no trial (are you listening, Johnny Cochran?), though the accused will have the right to a post-towing hearing. That ought to discourage them, the reasoning went.
"When you have to come up with $55 or whatever, you remember," said City Councilman Harold Shafter.
Some time ago, City Attorney Russell Mahan drafted a similar ordinance that prohibited the practice with or without the consent of the property owner. Some City Council members liked that, since they didn't like junky cars with scrawled "For Sale" signs on the side filling up every spare nook and cranny in the city. But others felt it was Draconian and voted it down.
The present ordinance "is drafted very tightly," Mahan said.
Selling cars on public property is already prohibited.
To be sure, before the ordinance was passed, private property owners could have the cars towed, but there were problems with that. The towees are indignant, it's an administrative mess, the towing company is caught in the middle - it's a headache.
"The towing companies aren't anxious to tow cars off private property without police involvement," Mahan said.
So, you're tired of that 1983 Camaro? Want to unload it and get something a little more spiffy? Don't want to sell it to some used-car dealer who will hem and haw and offer half what it's worth? Well, don't succumb to the temptation of just sticking it out there someplace.
Tow trucks are standing by, ordinance in hand. You have been warned.