Fremont finally passes ordinance that imposes fines for trash
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on January 18, 2017 10:14 AM
After six months of discussion, continuous tabling, a committee meeting and a public hearing, the Fremont Board of Aldermen pushed through one last roadblock Tuesday evening to pass an amendment to the town code of ordinances which sets in place fines for residents who repeatedly leave trash and recycling bins on the street past pick up time.
That roadblock came in the form of a disagreement over the exact amount of the fine. In the original version of the amendment, created at a committee meeting in late 2016, the fine sat at $50.
That fine would be levied on a monthly basis, and only after a series of warning letters had been issued.
Alderman Leon Mooring agreed with the ordinance, but objected to the $50 fine, saying that he would not go above $25. Alderman Al Lewis and Mayor Pro-Tem W.T. Smith agreed, with Smith also saying that the ordinance gave too little leeway for people who might occasionally be unable to get their trash cans out after the required time of 5 p.m. or before 8 p.m. the next day.
Town administrator Barbara Aycock assured Smith that, in instances involving special circumstances, he or any other town resident could come to the town hall to work out an exception.
Smith also said that creating such a fine would make people not want to move to Fremont.
Alderwoman Joyce Artis, who originally brought the issue to the board in August and has been a vocal supporter of the fine since then, expressed frustration with the board's history of tabling the subject.
"We have ordinances which have been ignored," she said. "If we are going to enforce them, then we need to enforce them. If not, they need to be taken off the books."
The ordinances to which Mrs. Artis referred were the town's much harsher pre-existing trash can penalties, which had been largely ignored in the past. Under those rules, ordinance violators could be fined $100 for every day they were in violation, and would need to come up with the money within 96 hours of receiving the citation.
Those ordinances required that the citations be presented by the chief of police, which Fremont Police Chief Paul Moats said would make them effectively impossible to comply with.
"The citations we give are criminal citations, and those require an appearance in court," he said. "So then you have an additional $200 court cost on top of whatever fines you already have, and people are not going to be able to come up with that money in 96 hours.
"Unless we're going to establish our own court system in the town of Fremont and write our own citations that way, that's what you would have to do," he said.
Without a vote, the town would have ended up having to find a way to enforce those very ordinances.
That outcome nearly came to pass, after a motion by Mooring to accept the amendment with a $25 fine instead of a $50 fine was defeated by two votes to three. Confusion ensued in the meeting room quickly afterward, as the board members and town staff seemed to collectively realize what the vote would mean and quickly looked to find a legal remedy.
Alderwoman Annie Lewis, who had originally dissented, eventually called for another vote on the same amendment proposed by Mooring with the option to raise the fines if $25 was not effective.
This time, the amendment passed unanimously, prompting a sigh of relief from many in the room.