Politics & Government

New Underage Drinking Law Includes Fines

Kinnelon Council will vote to introduce ordinance on Thursday.

More than a year has gone by since the Kinnelon Council heard from about why he felt the borough needed an ordinance to .

Next week, the council is expected to vote on the introduction of an ordinance that would allow a judge to impose fines and revoke a driver's license temporarily under egregious circumstances if the underage individual is found guilty of the charge.

Mayor Bob Collins said he felt the council should move forward quickly on the ordinance.

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"We're coming up on graduation," he said. "Timeliness is, I think, an issue here."

At Thursday's borough council meeting, Borough Attorney Mark Madaio sought guidance from the council on which way he should draft the ordinance that the council has been debating-and -for more than a year.

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Finkle has said that while the borough currently has an ordinance that allows police to charge underage individuals found in possession of alcohol on public property, police do not have the same authority to charge them on private property. He feels who are on the fence about whether they should drink.

The Underage Drinking Ordinance Advisory Committee was formed in January with concerned citizens serving to examine the ordinance and make a recommendation to the council. While Collins emphasized throughout the process that the committee's recommendations were non-binding, the committee recommended not to impose fines as penalties in the ordinance, but instead, mandate alcohol education as a penalty. They also requested that the ordinance not allow police to enter a person's property with underage drinking as the primary offense.

Underage drinking on private property as a secondary offense was one of the recommendations of the committee that Madaio said could be used in the borough's new ordinance. Madaio said it was fairly obvious that police would not enter a person's private property to hunt for underage drinking parties, rather they would be responding to a noise complaint, medical call or be on the scene for another reason.

The version of the ordinance Madaio presented to the council Thursday night was developed with assistance from Councilmen Ron Mondello and Gary Moleta. The councilmen worked with Madaio on the specific language of the new ordinance, which now says that in "egregious" circumstances a judge can choose to revoke the driver's licens and "in lieu of" fines, a judge can impose six hours of alcohol education.

The biggest reason the council did not merely choose the committee's version of the ordinance to adopt is because a municipal judge said he would not use it if an individual appeared before him on the charges under the ordinance since the penalties were not in line with a state-recommended version, which includes fines. While the state did not mandate municipalities have an underage drinking ordinance, a state version is recommended for municipalities to adopt. Neighboring municipalities

"If the state was the one that said that that had to be the ordinance, then they should have said it had to be a state law," Councilman Stephen Cobell said.

Cobell agreed with the committee's recommendations and questioned why, if the state is not mandating the borough having an ordinance, the borough should not be able to choose its own penalties.

"Mandatory education, I think, is an excellent idea. The secondary offense, I think, is an excellent idea," he said.

Councilman Dan O'Dougherty said he also felt that since the council exhausted the resources of the committee, they should follow their recommendations. He said he felt having an ordinance at all could deter underage drinkers.

But Moleta said he felt that since the state version of the ordinance has worked well in other municipalities, Kinnelon should not try to change it and should use the version that does include fines as well as education.

"We have to send the right message to not only our kids, but to the families of our kids because kids have to know that there are boundaries," he said.

Mondello agreed that he felt the borough could have discretion in adopting new penalties with its ordinance, but said that if the judge will not use what the council adopts, then it would not be worth the council's time.

"If we do what the committee wants, the judge is going to throw it out every time, so what good have we done?" he said.

The council will be voting on the ordinance's introduction at its regular meeting at 8 p.m. on Thursday at the on Kinnelon Road.


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