At a recent meeting, Mono Supervisors refused to support a daytime anti-loitering ordinance forwarded by Sheriff Rick Scholl. The ordinance is aimed at combating truancy throughout the unincorporated parts of the county.

The ordinance would create penalties for school-age minors from loitering on public land during school hours. Scholl explained the current truancy laws are “pretty vague,” and put most of the onus on the school districts instead of law enforcement.

Supervisor Bill Reid asked Scholl if there were specific locations in the county where truancy was a problem, and Scholl admitted “we don’t really have a problem, we are trying to avoid a problem.”

Supervisor Hap Hazard called the ordinance “feel-good legislation,” and was not particularly interested in creating legislation for “problems that don’t exist.”

Scholl explained he had met with several local agencies including the School Districts, DA, County Counsel and MLPD to create the legislation, and had checked it’s constitutionality with other counties in the state, but when asked whether he had done any community outreach, he replied that he had not.

Supervisors asked Scholl to have his staff present the ordinance to county RPAC’s before returning it to the Board for approval. Scholl planned to make a presentation to the Bridgeport Regional Planning Advisory Committee Thursday at 7pm at Memorial Hall in Bridgeport.

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