Councilman: city should put teeth in its laws

Old cars are becoming a problem in Coulee Dam, just one of many that are increasing because the city’s ordinances don’t wield enough clout, according to one city council member.

Councilmember Keith St. Jeor said he gets complaints from people who know the city has laws on the books to keep unlicensed cars from accumulating on the streets but they see no enforcement.

“We don’t have a fee or fine schedule,” St. Jeor said, urging the city to create one to blanket many ordinances with a progressively increasing cost per violation.

St. Jeor said he’d been told one person had taken a count of six people living in recreational vehicles in town, which is against another city ordinance, apparently with no teeth.

“If a dog barks, if a car’s parked on city property,” St. Jeor said, for example, the lack of a fine schedule becomes an issue preventing enforcement.

Police Chief Paul Bowden said abandoned vehicles are hard to deal with because he can’t get a towing company to come to town to impound them.

“When you have an ordinance that you can’t have chickens, and you hear chickens in your neighborhood, and you’re only supposed to have two dogs and your neighbor has six … I mean, do we rip the ordinances up and just throw them in the garbage can … or do we enforce them?” St. Jeor said.

Councilmember Dale Rey said a practice of fining per occurrence coupled with the threat of turning unpaid fines over to a collections agency could have a significant effect.

There was general agreement to work on setting up a fine or fee structure that would be common to all city ordinances.