On Tuesday, August 9, at a public hearing, the Selectboard will be considering amendments to Chapters 1 and 12 of the Code of Ordinances. These primarily focus on changes to traffic violations. You can read the full amendments at the links below:
From the document:"Background: There are multiple reasons for the updates and expansion made to Chapter 12, Traffic:
- Colchester Police Officers currently write tickets for violations of state traffic statutes with fines that provide no revenue to the Town. By adopting local ordinances that mirror the most commonly used State statutes, our officers can write tickets as violations of local traffic ordinances and capture the resulting revenue for the Town.
- We have had several instances in the past few years where a parking prohibition would have been in the best interest of public safety. Amendments have been made to include provisions for declaring parking bans in unusual circumstances.
- The ordinance has been expanded to include new language for bicycle traffic and other additions.
- It became evident as we reviewed Chapter 12 that a comprehensive update had not been done since before the institution of E911 and we found a number of errors in road names and obsolete location descriptions related to the E911 changes. In addition, previous amendments had been added with an eye for expediency rather than consistency. Therefore, we have updated obsolete language, re-formatted the chapter, and made “housekeeping” changes for consistency of style, better comprehension, and ease of use."