Centerville City has updated its fine structure which means it’s now going to be more expensive to break the law as of July 2. Most fines range from $30 for violating winter parking restrictions to $500 for beer license, sexually oriented business, tobacco products and nuisance violations. 

“In order for the police department to issue a citation for a local code violation, the city must adopt a minimum fine for such violation,” the staff report said. “The proposed amendments to the Centerville Fine Schedule add a number of new Centerville Municipal Code violations to the list to provide the police department with more accurate coding of various violations.”

The fines for nuisances and parking violations are increasing while some offenses are being reduced from a Class B misdemeanor to a Class C misdemeanor and from a Class C misdemeanor to an infraction. 

The fine categories and jail time are outlined below:

Class B Misdemeanor: Fines up to $1,000, up to six months in jail

Class C Misdemeanor: Fines: Up to $750, up to 90 days in jail 

Infraction: Fines up to $750; no jail

Several violations will now be $300 including doing business without a license, expired business license and business regulation violations. Public property violations are $350 while food truck, public health, animal control [limited], burning or dumping refuse or water regulation violations are $250. Prohibited noise disturbance, cemetery and parks violations are $100. Since Davis County Animal Control provides animal control services for Centerville, the city follows Davis County code in relation to that except for intentional feeding of wild deer, elk or moose or the possession of wild animals.

“We want these to be a financial sanction as well as a deterrent effect, but we also took into consideration the danger to others so, for instance, sexually oriented businesses and tobacco products and beer [violations] those are all a $500 fine which is on the high end …Even some of the ones like fireworks and things on the hillside that could start a fire, those are the $500 fines, anything that might be very costly,” City Attorney Lisa Romney told the city council at their July 2 meeting.

The review committee, which was composed of staff, the police chief and Justice Court Judge David Miller, is hoping to do a more in-depth analysis of the fines and the surcharges imposed by the state and to report back to the city council. 

For instance, “If you issue a Class B misdemeanor there's a 90 percent surcharge on the fine that goes to the state and other entities; if you issue a Class C misdemeanor it's only a 35 percent surcharge so we would like to analyze those as well,” Romney said.

Some of the 90 percent surcharge does come back to the local jurisdiction while some goes to court security, she said later.

The committee also recommended lowering the standard for some crimes to categorize them as infractions.

“You’ll see a lot of these the newer ones we’re going with the class C or infraction because I think even at the state level they’re sort of reducing this, trying not to criminalize everything,” Romney said. “You realize over time with enforcement that you could issue something to someone that could have six months in jail but we’re not really going to do that with many of our municipal codes. So, since we’re not using that then making them an infraction might be a better route for us.”

Mayor Clark Wilkinson asked outgoing Police Chief Paul Child to comment on the proposed changes. 

It was important to go through the city’s fine structure and make sure it was in line with state code, Child said. “The important part is to get it on that SMOT [Utah’s Shared Master Offense] list. As an officer out in the field when you’re issuing a citation if it's not on the SMOT list it doesn’t show up on our drop-down [menu] and so it doesn’t get used. This will give us the opportunity to select on the drop-down ‘City Codes’ and then we can see all of them… There’s been a number of codes that are on the books that are city codes with penalties, crimes that we haven’t been able to even charge because from a logistical matter it’s not available to us to charge so this has been a pretty important thing to go through.”