City ordinances are laws of municipality. Who enforces those laws?"

I found this interesting because we recently have discussed ordinances that the city has on the books here in Peru but that they, the Mayor and City Council, ignore. What committee should be looking at this as the council is not discussing it but weekly adds more ordinances to our books.

Streator may tighten belt on code enforcement

Share 06/12/2012, 7:14 pm Comment on this story | Print this story | Email this story Jerrilyn Zavada, jzavada@mywebtimes.com, 815-673-6371

Streator councilmen hope to beef up parking and code enforcement by police officers.

At Tuesday's Committee of the Whole meeting, city manager Paul Nicholson looked to the city council for direction in enforcing parking violations throughout the city.

"What we need to have is to get back to fundamental basic policy direction. We have these ordinances on books; are we going to enforce them?"Nicholson said. "We're looking to the entire aspect of parking on streets of how we appear as a community. From my perspective as your city manager, I'm looking for the council to reaffirm policy."

Council members agreed that if a policy is on the books, it should be enforced.

"If we've got it on books, I'm not sure why we're not taking action," councilman Ed Brozak said.

"The fire department is going out and writing violations because policemen have refused to do it," councilman Willy Williamson said. "There are 16 to 18 citations that the fire department has given to the police department, and they haven't decided what to do with it. They haven't been directed from top down to do it. The fire department is doing exactly what it said it's going to do. City ordinances are laws of municipality. Who enforces those laws?"

Mayor Jimmie Lansford praised the fire department for having "more eyes out there" and noted they are taking their job seriously because they have written the city up for code violations. The fire department said the violations were for weeds at the city pool property and weeds at the Knoedler building on Iowa Avenue.

"The next step coming out of this is to meet face-to-face with department leadership and then begin implementation," Nicholson said.

In related discussion, the city is securing agreements with businesses with private parking, such as Walgreens and Walmart so police can make arrests for late night loitering and other violations.