8.5. SR 08-19-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

City of Elk Request for Action River To Item Number Mayor and City Council 8.5 Agenda Section Meeting Date Prepared by General Business August 19, 2013 Scott Baumgartner, City Prosecuting Attorney Item Description Reviewed by Review and Provide Comment on Amendments to Cal Portner, City Administrator Various Section of the City Code Regarding Reviewed by Offense Classifications/Fines Peter Beck, City Attorney Action Requested Review and comment on spreadsheet. Staff will bring this item back to the September 3, 2013, Council meeting for formal adoption of an ordinance. Background/Discussion The courts have begun a project to add local ordinance and administrative rule violations to the MN Court Information System(MNCIS) offense code table. Adding ordinance violations to the MNCIS offense code table will allow fine amounts and other unique offense data to auto populate in MNCIS the same way it does today for statutory violations. Currently,the MNCIS offense code table does not include unique offense codes for individual ordinance and administrative rule violations. The consequences if valid, current, and complete ordinance data is not added to the MNCIS offense code table include: • If the MNCIS offense code table and charged ordinances do not match, eCitations and eComplaints will be auto rejected and initiation of paper citations and complaints into MNCIS will be delayed until the issue of unmatched charge codes is resolved. • MNCIS will assign the incorrect case type and/or level of offense, resulting in incorrect case processing and incorrect collateral consequences for offenders. • Incorrect codes and/or descriptions of ordinance violations could result in a higher volume of contested hearings and possible dismissals. For these reasons, the courts wanted to provide prosecuting agencies with an opportunity to validate and supplement the current local ordinance data for their jurisdictions so valid, current,and complete ordinance data gets inputted into the MNCIS offense code table to avoid citation entry delays and rejected efilings. It's important to note that although prosecuting agencies can recommend that an ordinance violation be payable and the corresponding fine amount, only judges have the authority to designate an ordinance violation as payable and set the payable fine amount (See Minn.R.Crim.P. 23.03). Included with this report is a table identifying the city's most commonly cited ordinance violations, their designated level of offense,whether they are payable offenses, and if so,the designated fine amount. The redlining identifies changes, additions, and deletions to what the courts previously had on file for the city. P a w E R E U 6 Y NaA f RE]