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Showing posts from January, 2025

Thoughts on Shoveling Snow

Recently I read a post on social media comparing the penalty for speeding in a school zone to the possible maximum penalty for a resident pushing snow from their property into the street. Then someone in person asked me a similar question the other day, so I guess this idea is on people's minds. I don't know if the specific situation is in question here, or if the concern really has to do with some larger concepts of city ordinances and enforcement in general. "Is the maximum penalty extreme?" is usually not the central question when examining or creating city code. Of course it is. That's what a maximum penalty is supposed to be. Instead, a central question to ask is "Could there ever be a situation in which the maximum penalty is appropriate and necessary?" And if we could imagine a scenario--unlikely, but readily possible--in which it would be good for the city to have a severe penalty for a code or ordinance infraction available in its tool kit for p...