Published: March 12, 2008 12:05 pm            

GBC Council considers a curfew

It’s midnight on the streets of Gun Barrel City. Do you know where your teen age child is right now?

City Hall may want to know. But first, the council members want further consultation with their attorneys.

Not only has the city council authorized its attorneys to bring them information from other municipalities concerning curfew restrictions, they’re also asking about daytime curfew restrictions on teenagers.

If you’re one of those people, you might want to pay attention.

It all came up Tuesday night when City Manager Gerry Boren asked the council for guidance on what it should do about its current ordinance.

The state requires that ordinances be reviewed every three years so they can either be, kept in place, abandoned, or modified.

Boren then told the council about a Corpus Christie daytime curfew which has been enacted to cut down on truancy. “It’s to keep kids in school,” he said.

But Boren also warned that any type of curfew change would have to be justified.

He recommended checking dispatch logs at the police department to get a handle on whether there’s a real need, or not.

The City Manager also said the current system of officers having to issue, one, two or three warning tickets was restricting them in enforcing such curfews.

Actual citations, city officials said, are almost never given because the city has to keep up with the number of offenses each individual has committed.

Council members appeared to be in agreement that kids should be in school during the day, and in bed well before sunup, while allowing that there are exceptions when kids would not be punished for being on the streets after curfew.

Since some parents home school, their children could be on the streets at different hours.

The current curfew allows teenagers to be out after curfew if they’re with a parent.

The council wants to know what legal complications might come up, so their attorneys will be back in a couple of weeks to discuss the matter further.

In other items at Tuesday night’s regularly-scheduled city council meeting, members voted;

• unanimously to approve a Planning and Zoning Commission Recommendation for a hearing to consider a request for the rezoning of a 4.71 acre tract of land belonging to TRP, Cedar Isle, Ltd for April 8;

• unanimously to approve a P& Z recommendation for a public hearing on a request from Veronica Lamb for a special use permit to operate a tattooo clinic at 114 S. Old Gun Barrel Lane, Suite 6, a for April 8;

• unanimously approved a request from councilman Marty Goss to chair a committee to plan the Fourth of July festival;

• unanimously approved the bid recommendations for 2008 for road work to Armour Material, R.K. Hall Construction, Trinity Materials and S&S Trucking;

• unanimously approved an ordinance authorizing the payment of all City services by credit card, establishing a processing fee amount for payment by credit card, and approving the suggestion that the processing fee (probably around 3 percent for using a credit card) would be deposited into the general fund;

• unanimously approved an ordinance amending an earlier ordinances on notices to remove or abate nuisances.

The new ordinance streamlines the department and establishes one code enforcement department with a couple of sub divisions.

The idea is to give the ordinance “more teeth,” according to City Manager Gary Boren. The code compliance title will be changed and three new job descriptions will be compiled.

• unanimously approved a rresolution encouraged by Boren, requesting East Texas Medical Center contract with United Health Care Options Pro. This would allow network access through the TML Intergovernmental Employee Benefits Pool. Most city employees have their insurance through United, which handles TML’s insurance program.

Boren said ETMC is considering dropping United, which would affect medical services for employees in most municipalities.

        

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