By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
ROCKY HILL — There’s no longer any local laws on the books to specifically keep you from riding your donkey down the street at a speedy pace.
That’s because the Borough Council voted Monday to repeal its Peace and Good Order ordinance, a measure passed in 1915 that prohibited a long list of acts, many of them now anachronistic.
Mayor Ed Zimmerman said the council has spent the last several years going through the borough ordinance book and “cleaning up” older ordinances, repealing redundant ones and codifying others.
”The Peace and Good Order ordinance was written in 1915, and it contained a lot of extraneous stuff like not being able to run your horse down the middle of Main Street,” he said. “Most of the stuff that was still relevant we found was covered under state statute or other ordinances.”
Indeed, Article I of the now-repealed law defined acts including the following as disorderly conduct:
• ”Intentionally leading, driving or riding any horse or other animal, whether attached to any vehicle or not, on any street, faster than eight miles an hour.”
• ”Tying a horse or mule to a shade tree, or permitting a horse or mule to injure the bark of a shade tree.”
• ”Disturbing the quiet of the Borough or any lawful assemblage of persons” through the use of “any profane, indecent or offensive language.”
• ”Making audible or offensive remarks or comments upon any person passing along a street or other public place.”
Violations were punishable by fines of no more than $20 and up to 30 days in county jail.
Article II dealt with “Vice and Immorality,” which included the undefined “houses of ill-fame” and “games of chance."
Many of the items in the law, such as prohibitions against discharging firearms into a public street or knowingly creating a false alarm of fire are covered by existing laws.
The sole vote against repeal came from Councilman Bob Steen, who said he valued the history the ordinance represented.
”It was a piece of history I didn’t want to see go away,” he said.
”I agreed with the rest of the council that there were some obvious things wrong with it — it had some infringements on free speech I think we really did need to get rid of — but I disagreed with the way we did it,” he continued.
”I think we could’ve repealed just portions of it instead and kept some history alive.”
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