FLOWERY BRANCH – Traffic accidents within city limits can cause damage to more than just the vehicles involved; city property is often a victim as well.
The Flowery Branch City Council Thursday evening approved entering a contract with Peachtree Recovery Services, a multi-state company headquartered in Suwanee, Georgia, to help the city recoup the cost of repairing or replacing city property that becomes collateral damage when vehicular accidents occur.
Todd Rhoad, VP Business Development for Peachtree Recovery Services, told city council members, “Signs, guard rails, trees in the median, sidewalks, asphalt, bridges - all of this stuff is not insured by the city. You don’t have a policy to cover it. The reason…is because typically they are damaged by automobiles and we do have laws that say you’ve got to have automobile insurance to cover those kinds of things.”
“But one of the challenges we’ve seen with a lot of cities and counties is having enough resources to look at all those traffic accidents to identify all those damages, and then go after the insurance companies to recover those funds,” Rhoad explained.
“Typically that’s something a lot of cities and counties don’t have, so typically that work doesn’t get done,” Rhoad continued.
Rhoad said that the service PRS provides is without cost to the city. “We do all the work. We don’t need any data from the city. We don’t need to use any resources or personnel, so it’s basically hands-free for the city.”
“You only pay us when we recover money,” he said. “You pay for performance, not effort.”
“We’re in seven different states. We started in 2015 so we’re still growing. We have about 40 clients in Georgia, including the City of Atlanta which has about 35,000 accidents per year.”
According to data provided by Rhoad, PRS has recovered over $2.25-million for Atlanta. Nearest city to Flowery Branch served by PRS, Marietta, has received $285,700 to date for previously unfiled claims.
Rhoad added that PRS could retroactively investigate damages suffered by the city and compare that information to funds collected by the city through insurance claims.
“Once we get a contract with a city…by law we can go back four years under the Statute of Limitations to look at all the traffic accidents that occurred in the city,” Rhoad said regarding the data base of all traffic accidents in the state maintained by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
“We will review every one of those and identify where there are damages and then we will go pursue those with the insurance companies.”
“We’re going to chase everything to get all the money back that we can for the city,” Rhoad said, explaining PRS has learned over the years which claims are attainable and which are not. “We typically get about 98.83-percent of what we ask for.”
The three year contract between PRS and the City of Flowery Branch was approved unanimously and takes effect once all documents have been signed.
