My city is considering adopting a Permit Parking Only ordinance that will severely affect the ability of my customers to park near my business. How can I stop the ordinance from being approved?
My city is considering adopting a Permit Parking Only ordinance that will severely affect the ability of my customers to park near my business. How can I stop the ordinance from being approved?
Lobby city council.
By going to city council meetings. By urging your city council members not to adopt the ordinance. By urging others in your city to lobby the city council members.
Did you really not know these things?
Do you want to say what city and what state? Is the ordinance already introduced? Has it passed its first reading? Was there a public hearing held yet? Is it posted online for us to read? What is the recitation of the need for the ordinance? Is it public safety, health, and welfare? Or does it somehow benefit a select group of people or businesses? Might it be considered arbitrary or capricious?
Aside from what the others have advised you, there are also legal ways to fight an ordinance depending on some of the questions I asked.
I guess you never practiced municipal law. Not withstanding procedural issue that can have an ordinance tabled for an indefinite period of time and have to be reintroduced, there are court actions that the public can take to stall passage. Is the ordinance in conformance with the municipal master plan and zoning for example? Have the prescribed studies been conducted on the effects of the ordinance? The list does go on.
And after passage, the public can prevent implementation based on the facts, where here we don't have any. But to say that the public cannot prevent enactment of an ordnance is simply incorrect. A rare but significant foible on your part in your response.![]()
Detail that Bud. Not by a Writ of Mandamus, or even Prohibition, those are Extraordinary Writs. A Declaratory Judgement challenging the Constitutionality of an Ordinance not in effect? It's not an emergency or public safety measure!
The public cannot prevent the city from enacting the ordinance. A person may fight the ordinance in court after enactment either arguing procedural missteps in enacting it, or violations of state or federal Constitutions, statutes, etc. But they cannot stop the city by going to court before enactment. Might a person slow the city down using the various procedures that the city must go through to enact the ordinance? Of course. But if the city is determined to adopt the ordinance eventually it will pass it. It is once enacted into law that the court challenges may begin.
Bud, here is a case of an action in Mandamus Ex-rel, the Writ was granted. As you see, such a Writ is scrutinized for content. Yes, the Relators challenged the law after passage and before it's effect date, but you can read the legal difficulties of such a Writ being granted.
https://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/d...-ohio-6717.pdf