Is your grass too tall? Are your curtains mismatched? Are you drinking a beer too close to the grill? In Pagedale, all of these are considered ticket-worthy offenses. This week, a public interest law firm filed a civil-rights suit on behalf of residents who have received notices for minor housing-code violations. The lawsuit calls Pagedale’s approach to ticketing “an unprecedented governmental intrusion into the homes of its residents.”
Missouri Senate Bill 5, passed into law this summer, caps at 12.5 percent the amount of general revenue a St. Louis County municipality can bring in from traffic fines and fees. Prior to the passage of SB5, Pagedale brought in nearly 19 percent of its general revenue in this manner. A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the lawsuit states: “Notably, Pagedale has focused its enforcement efforts on the types of code violations that are not regulated by the municipal court reform measure passed to rein in abusive ticketing. The newspaper found that the city had issued 2,255 citations for these types of nontraffic offenses last year — or nearly two per household. That’s a nearly 500 percent increase from five years ago, according to an analysis of state court data.”
The lead plaintiffs in the case, Valarie Whitner and Vincent Blount, struggled to pay the $1,810 they owed in accumulated “nuisance” fines. When they couldn’t pay, the City of Pagedale threatened to demolish their house; ultimately, the couple had to take out a payday loan to cover the cost.
William Mauer, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, put it this way: “[The goal] is to change the city’s approach to its residents. It’s not designed to get damages, it’s not designed to punish the city. The idea here is the city has to stop violating its residents’ constitutional rights.”
(Better Together staffer with municipal ordinances from the 90 municipalities in St. Louis County)