Council To Consider Laws On Runaways Car Alarms, Garbage May Also Be Regulated By Post Falls

The police can’t prevent kids from running away from home.

The parks staff can’t stop county residents from throwing their household garbage in park Dumpsters.

And what do you do about those pesky car alarms?

The Post Falls prosecuting attorney will ask the City Council at its regular meeting next week if the city should pursue drafting laws to govern these troublesome problems.

The city has an old curfew ordinance that makes it illegal for people under 18 years of age to be on the streets between midnight and 5 a.m.

But no city laws address kids running away or skipping school.

If a parent calls the police to report that a child has run away, “we can find them and bring them back. We have that authority,” said police Chief Cliff Hayes.

But teenagers now face no other legal consequences for running away. Some parents want that to change.

They’ve formed the Kootenai County Youth Task Force to press the issue. The Task Force backed a proposed county ordinance to make running away and truancy a misdemeanor, and establishing a county-wide curfew.

This fall, the county passed a watered down ordinance that establishes a curfew.

“If the county hasn’t been able to implement one we can model, we wanted to discuss whether we want to draft one with the council,” Hayes said.

Gary Stamper, a spokesman for the Youth Task Force, was thrilled by the move to address the issue in Post Falls.

“I praise Post Falls for taking a leadership position on this in the county,” he said. Stamper is leading an initiative effort to get the proposed countywide ordinance on the primary election ballot in May.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting:

The council will consider whether to outlaw dumping household trash in city Dumpsters.

A city animal control officer has caught a county resident dumping trash in the park Dumpster, but had no legal means of preventing it.

The resident explained that it was more convenient to use the city Dumpster than to drive to the county waste transfer station in Coeur d’Alene, Hayes said.

“The citizens of the community are paying for the dumping,” Hayes said.

The city pays a contractor $2,300 to pick up the park’s trash, and approximately $1,450 in landfill fees for park trash each year, depending on the volume. Any individual with county license plates can dump trash for free at the landfill.

The third item the city may want to consider is an ordinance to penalize owners of car alarms that go off for no reason.

City Clerk Chris Pappas said the council will look at whether vehicle alarms should be regulated under the noise ordinance or under a separate ordinance. The council recently adopted an ordinance to discourage faulty alarms at businesses, and may set fees for violating that ordinance.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING The Post Falls City Council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday