LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Select Board members want to even the playing field for towing.

In a 2-1 vote with Chair Michael Murphy in opposition, the board last week voted to allow businesses outside of Lanesborough to be on the towing list. Current towers will work with the town on a formal policy, as there is currently not one.

"Frankly, I think it's premature," Murphy said about the motion made by Select Board member Deborah Maynard.

Two years ago, Police Chief Robert Derksen was contacted by a local tow agency that wanted to be put on the rotation. He brought a sample policy to the board in March 2023 and returned with the same one at Monday's meeting.

"I think the kind of consensus at that time with the Select Board at that time was that we would limit it to businesses in the town of Lanesborough for tow agencies," he said.

"However, it was also mentioned that we really should have a written — it's almost like a procurement policy as far as vendors. In this case, tow agencies."

Select Board member Timothy Sorrell said it was "kind of hanging in the air" and wanted to revisit it.  The job is done by two town companies: Village Truck Sales and Sayers' Auto Wrecking.

"It seems to be the tow service is the only monopoly in town," he said. "That's kind of what we question is, why is that the only one where other out-of-town services aren't allowed to do business here?"

Jamie Szczepaniak, general manager at Village Truck Sales, felt he was being thrown to the wind. He said Sayers and himself have a "phenomenal working relationship where if I can't do it, he can, and if he can't do it I can."

"We seem like we're beating a dead horse again. We went through this and my understanding when we left here the last time is everybody was on board to keep it in town," he said.

"If there were more trash businesses in town, then we should cater to the trash business in town. We're all here. We pay taxes. Tens of thousands of dollars in excise tax, property tax."

Sorell said they are just trying to be fair.

"Because we brought up the example: Does this mean we only buy our office supplies from Target or somebody that's in town?" he said. "So we're just trying to be out there and be honest with people."

He could take it any way he wanted, Murphy said to Szczepaniak, but nobody on the board was throwing him to the wind.

"Personally, you should work with everything in town first," Szczepaniak replied. "You should have the town trash man first. You should have the town office supplies first. You should. They spend their money here. They should make their money back here in town."

Henry Sayers, president of Sayers Auto Wrecking, said he has hardly missed any calls in 50 years. He explained that nobody can find the policy that keeps towing within the town.

"When started my towing business was in 1977. We had the same conversation and this is the way we set it up," he said. "Because I went to Pittsfield trying to get on their list and people from then try to get back at me and come to Lanesborough and we got into a contest."

Maynard didn think adding one more towing company to the rotation would hurt the existing businesses but they disagreed.

The board offered to work with the business owners on a policy.

"We've had someone else approach us. We have no policy. We have nothing in writing. So we're trying to come up with a way to find out whether or not it's doable," Murphy said.

"This is part of that process so your input is important to us, what we think a policy should be is important to us, and that's part of the process we're trying to start."

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