The City of Dayton recently amended chapter 94 of the City of Dayton Code of Ordinances dealing with littering and dumping on private and public properties.
This issue was brought to the city administration’s attention by City Council Member Joe Neary, who lives near Sargeant Park. He said he constantly saw people throwing litter in the park on his walks around the area, and he asked Dayton City Administrator Jay Fosset to investigate the issue. During the Feb. 1 Dayton City Council Meeting, the council heard the first reading.
“I looked at our ordinance, and our ordinance, unfortunately, was written for dumping on private property,” Fosset said. “For some reason, it doesn’t say anything about public property. So, these changes are now reflecting dumping or littering on private or public property and are actionable by our code enforcement as well as our police department.”
On March 1, a second reading was heard during the city council meeting and unanimously passed.
“I want to thank the administration for getting this together,” Neary, who brought up the issues, said. “I came up with the question not too long ago on littering, and going through this material, I found out that our ordinance didn’t really cover that, so Mr. Fosset, the administration all got together and put this together very quickly in just a couple of months and I do appreciate that. Now the issue is enforcement.”
During the meeting, it was brought up that there have been people prosecuted for littering cases in Dayton before with repercussions like five hours of community service.
“This ordinance can be enforced both criminally through the police department, and if you see someone doing it, civil code enforcement can do it as well,” Fosset said. “So, this new ordinance allows us to do both. Sometimes these aren’t effective because police are busy doing other things; they don’t see the actions happening, but Cassie [Dayton’s Code Enforcement Director] sees it all the time when people dump stuff on properties, so she is able to enforce it as well. So, it’s good that we have both.”
The new amendment will cover dumping or littering on any public property, including parks and recreational areas and public bodies of water or sewers.
