Idaho Falls, ID Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

Section 9-4-11 gives any peace officer authority to remove, cause to be removed, and impound any vehicle parked in violation of Title 9 Chapter 4. Several of that chapter's parking limits are therefore also tow triggers. Under 9-4-26 a licensed and operable motor vehicle may not sit on a street or alley for more than forty-eight consecutive hours in the same location. Under 9-4-27 a disabled, unlicensed, or inoperable vehicle gets only twenty-four consecutive hours. Under 9-4-5 a motorhome or trailer may be parked for loading and unloading for no more than two twenty-four hour periods in any seven day window, and that subsection says expressly that an unlawfully stored motorhome or trailer may be removed by or under the direction of any peace officer and impounded. Moving the vehicle does not reset the clock unless you move it far enough: the code treats a vehicle as parked in the same location notwithstanding movement to another spot within three hundred feet of the original location.

The money side is unusually short. Section 9-4-12 charges the owner of an impounded motor vehicle or trailer a City impound fee of fifteen dollars before release, and it applies whether the impound was made under a provision of the City Code or under any law of the State of Idaho. That fifteen dollars is the only dollar amount the towing sections contain. The actual tow and storage bill is governed by 9-4-13, which requires a reasonable towing and storage fee and directs that it be paid to the person or company effecting the removal and providing the storage, not to the City. The City is paid only when City personnel did the towing or storing. Section 9-4-14 then hands the rate-setting job to the City Council, which shall annually establish by resolution the towing and storage fees provided for in the chapter. There is no weight class schedule in the ordinance, no hooking or drop fee cap, no mileage rate and no daily storage figure, so an Idaho Falls owner cannot read the ceiling on the bill out of the code the way an owner in a city with a printed rate table can. Idaho also sets no statewide non-consent rate cap, so the current Council resolution is the operative document.

Winter is handled separately, in Title 9 Chapter 5. The Winter Season runs from midnight on November 14 through midnight on March 15 of the following year, and during it 9-5-4 bans parking on Arterial and Collector streets at all times, on Night-time Snow Removal Streets from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., and in the Downtown Area from midnight to 8:00 a.m., with north-south streets restricted on even calendar days and east-west streets on odd ones. Zone A works on the same odd and even split from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. once a Snow Event begins, or until the Street Superintendent determines snow removal is complete. Section 9-5-6 lets a City police officer direct removal of a vehicle parked in violation, and it offers two outcomes: the vehicle may simply be towed to another public street where parking is lawful, or it may be towed and stored in any public or private storage lot, without prior notice to the owner or operator. That no-prior-notice language is explicit in the ordinance. Section 9-5-7 then puts the private lot's reasonable towing and storage charges on the owner or operator, payable to the private towing company before release, with the tow charge going to the City instead if the vehicle went to a lot the City owns, controls or leases.

There is no post-tow hearing in the code. The hearing officer procedure in 9-4-25 belongs to the parking citation, not the tow: a person may deny the violation and request a hearing before an Idaho Falls Police Department hearing officer within fourteen days of the notice, the hearing officer schedules it within ten working days, and rules within ten days of the hearing. If the violation is sustained the hearing officer files a summons and criminal complaint with the Bonneville County Magistrate Court for prosecution by the City Attorney Division. Winning that hearing clears the ticket; it does not, by the ordinance's terms, recover the tow and storage money already paid to a private operator. Section 9-4-29 also preserves all other lawful remedies, so a notice of violation is not the exclusive enforcement route.

Private property tows sit almost entirely outside the City Code. Title 9 Chapter 6 makes it an infraction to park on posted private property without the owner's consent, and defines posted as one or more signs legibly printed in the English language stating that public parking is prohibited, with at least one sign plainly visible from each vehicular entrance. The chapter creates an offense; it does not license tow operators, cap what a private lot may charge, require a sign naming the towing firm, or set release hours. Those questions are answered by state law, principally Idaho Code section 49-1806 and the sections following it, which condition removal from real property on a conspicuous sign in large print naming the towing firm and warning that unauthorized vehicles will be removed at the owner's expense.