Once again the Gargoyle Leader puts on kid gloves while battling a monster;
Review the way that city code is enforced across the board and find a better way to make it fair.
Earlier in this editorial you said what is wrong with code enforcement; IT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The review process is over, we know what will make it fair; get rid of the administrative appeals process and let citizens fight their citations in front of a judge.
It’s fortunate that new Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether already had called for just such a review during his campaign, saying that consolidating the process across the various departments that oversee city code might be the best solution.
Consolidation will help the administrative part of code enforcement and save tax payers money, but it does nothing to solve the problem. It is really quite simple;
• Fire anyone directly involved with this mess
• Totally destruct the process as it is now and start from scratch
• Allow citizens to defend themselves in a court of law
This isn’t freaking rocket science, it is constitutional rights. It is a shame, that a person who has given so much to Americans as a combat vet had to spend $40,000 of his own money to prove the obvious.
The bigger question though is why is the Gargoyle Leader using kid gloves on this topic? It’s simple, they have contributed to the flawed system in a round about way. After one of their employees was killed by a careless driver they pushed to put in red light cameras, another convoluted city endeavor that doesn’t allow citizens to fight their charges in front of a judge. Funny how the AL Ed Board didn’t bring that up in the editorial.
Sorry, you can’t have it both ways, if you want to keep the cameras, you have to ditch the unconstitutionality of them. That means actually ticketing offenders (not cars) and allowing them to argue their charge in front of a judge, or dismantling the robot police.