How to dispute a tow in Cicero

Cook, DuPage and Kane counties are all inside Illinois Commerce Commission relocation jurisdiction, so a tow from a shared lot in Cicero, Berwyn, Melrose Park, Naperville, Aurora or Elgin is measured against the state sign, distance, notification and rate rules.

Cicero runs its own impound. Two pieces of Illinois law are worth knowing here: a relocator has to let you take the car if you get back before the removal is complete, and if you cannot reach the relocator by phone for a full hour after your first try, all towing and storage fees are waived. A suburban impound is not the City of Chicago pound and does not use Chicago's published rates. Illinois law (625 ILCS 5/11-208.7) requires a municipal administrative fee to be reasonable and related to the municipality's actual administrative and processing costs, and it sets no dollar cap, which is why these figures vary so widely from village to village. What it does guarantee is procedure: notice within 10 days, an initial hearing convened no later than 45 days after that notice is mailed, and a refund of administrative fees if the hearing officer finds the vehicle was stolen or hijacked at the time it was impounded. Call the department that ordered the tow and ask for its administrative fee and daily storage rate.

Cicero holds 85,268 residents, the eleventh-most populous municipality in Illinois, with a median household income of $53,726. More than 89 percent of the town is Hispanic, which makes it the most Hispanic municipality in the state. Cermak Road, once 22nd Street, is the commercial spine, and the Czech and Bohemian storefronts that lined it were replaced through the 1980s and 1990s by Spanish-language businesses. Ogden Avenue, Roosevelt Road, Cicero Avenue and 26th Street carry the rest of the traffic, and the Cicero Metra station on the BNSF line, near Cicero Avenue and 26th Street, sits on the Aurora to Union Station run. Hawthorne Race Course still runs on the Cicero and Stickney line, with the former Sportsman's Park site just north of it. The towing picture here comes straight out of the housing: dense two-flats and bungalows, minimal off-street parking, and incomes well below the county median, which means a tow bill lands harder here than it does in Elmhurst. Two pieces of Illinois law are worth knowing in Cicero. If you get back to your car before the relocator has finished hooking it, they have to let you take it. And if you cannot reach the relocator by phone for a full hour after your first try, the law says all the towing and storage fees are waived. Operators cover Cermak, 26th Street, the Metra station and the residential grid, and we answer in Spanish.