New state law prevents city’s enforcement of daytime, nighttime curfews for youth
(Seguin) — A long standing juvenile curfew ordinance in Seguin is being removed from the books. The Seguin City Council on Tuesday approved the removal of both the daytime and nighttime curfew ordinances for children.
Seguin City Attorney Andy Quittner says the curfews are being removed because the city can no longer enforce them thanks to a new state law, which limits the city’s ability to have its own rules like this.
“The reason I brought this, in part, was to kind of bring some attention (to this). You don’t want dead ordinances, but you can leave them. This year’s legislative session probably went the furthest in taking away local control in favor of state control in a number of areas. There’s been a lot of talk about the Death Star Bill, but there are a lot of other areas that affect both quality of life and costs,” said Quittner.
Quittner described the curfew ordinances as a quality of life issue in Seguin. He says they benefited the community and the teens themselves. He says it wasn’t used to lock-up or harass kids, but instead it was a way to intervene before something bad happened, and it often was used to get kids home or to get them to school.
“In my tenure of nearly 14 years at municipal court, I can probably count on two hands the number of juvenile curfew cases I actually had come in front of me. A lot of it was just ways to encounter youth and get them back in school — instead of running around in the afternoon; or maybe encounter someone in the evening and stop something from happening that would not be in everybody’s, including the youth’s benefit. I just wanted the public and the council to know that you’re going to see a lot changes and things like that, and this is one of them,” said Quittner.
The new state law isn’t just going to impact things, like the teen curfew ordinance. Quittner says it could also impact other policies and practices that have benefited the city over the years.
“For example, one of the things that we require, or have in the past, is require developers to dedicate a certain amount of land for future roads. We will no longer be able to do that, unless the road is identified, adjacent and funded. I don’t even know that (the) Cordova Road (project) meets all of that, because funding is kind of lined up, but it’s not really there (yet). I think attorneys could argue that one from both sides for quite some time, but it’s unsure,” said Quittner.
Quittner says there could be more unintended consequences because of the law and the loss of local control over some issues. He says it’s something that the city will have to continue to monitor as long as the new state law is on the books. Some cities are attempting to sue the state over the passage of the law, suggesting that it may be unconstitutional.