Hi. Here are all the Brooklyn Center City Ordinances.

All the information here was downloaded from the City of Brooklyn Center web site. I have not proof read any of the text contained here. Right now all the ordinances are shown as pure XML files, at some point, as time allows, I will create some decent HTML output for them. For now you can view them as XML and search through them. Because the files are XML there are no navigation tags, so you will have to select the back option on your browser to get back to this menu. Once I have them outputted as HTML I will be able to make navigation easier.

Thanks!

My thoughts about the ordinances after having read through most of them...

There is a style manual that some governments use when codifying their city laws. It's fairly obvious that whoever created the Brooklyn Center ordinances presented here didn't consult any style manual. When I parsed and edited the files, I changed very little of the style, so all the ugliness still exists here in the XML. The thing is, now that it is "Well-formed" XML, it would be MUCH easier to make any style changes. An example of how the existing ordinances violate any type of styling and humor in laws:

1) When writing ordinances you should use the same designations for your sub-sections from one section to another, yet if you look at Chapter 3 of the Brooklyn Center ordinances, you will notice that sub-sections have the designations A - Z (Capital Letters) while in most of the other Chapters sub-sections use a designation of 1 -XX (Numbers). It gets worse when you get to the sub-sub-sections, etc. Most style manuals will tell you that it goes in this order;

1st Level of subsection: Use a), b), c), etc. / Lowercase letters
2nd Level of subsection: Use 1), 2), 3), etc. / Numbers
3rd Level of subsection: Use A), B), C), etc. / Uppercase Letters
4th Level of subsection: Use i), ii), iii), etc. / Lowercase Roman Numerals

Sometimes the subsections actually have the word "Subdivision" before the actual designation, again, I have left those in the files, just the way I found them. It would be very easy to write a parser that could fix it all. How the ordinances ever got in the condition they are in, I'll never know.

2) Funny things about the ordinances. There are several locations where they discuss Adult Establishments. The words the choose to use when discussing sex and sexuality almost makes it seem a little sick and twisted. Like you could see some dirty old pervert in their basement writing these laws using the words that have been chosen. Maybe because many of the words seem a little antiquated to me. I don't know, it's just a little weird. And then apparently there are some people of Italian heritage that don't like the fireworks section because some type of firework is referred to as "daygo" bombs. The origin of the use of this name for this type of firework has some proven history to it, and it did start with 3 Italian fellows who had this type of firework in their possession. If I were a particularly sensitive person maybe I could find it within myself to be upset about the "slur" "daygo." Then there is the law that prohibits people from wearing clothing of persons of the opposite sex. So if you see cross-dressers walking down the street, I guess you could call the cops. Vagrancy IS against the law in Brooklyn Center, so I don't know why they allow the panhandlers to beg on the street corners. Some day I will get an answer to that.