If you’ve been living in any area of the United States long enough, you’re most likely aware of certain state laws, as those are considered "the biggies". For example, a common statewide law in most US states are that safety belts must be worn while driving a car. You were probably made aware of this from large signage promoting the NHTSA‘s "Click It Or Ticket" campaign.
When it comes to city ordinances however, most people don’t have the first clue what’s legal and what isn’t only because they’re not aware of what the law is.
Ordinances traditionally only apply to cities, and sometimes even just portions (as in districts) of cities; it’s difficult at times to know whether you’re within the boundaries of the law or not concerning certain activities. A standard complaint by many is, "If I knew what the law was in the first place, I wouldn’t have broken it", followed by the request of, "Where can I get easy access to all current city ordinances so I can educate myself?"
Fortunately there’s Municode.com Municipal Code Library. This is a free service that covers the vast majority of city ordinances for all 50 states.
This library is laid out in simple point-and-click style (meaning not the typical ‘mountain of PDFs’ style of downloading) and is also searchable on a per-city level.
A quick example
You’re a resident of Tampa, Florida and want to dig a hole to install an antenna mast.
1. Go to the code library as linked above.
2. Click the State of Florida or select Florida from the drop-down menu.
3. Locate the City of Tampa link and click it (cities and towns are listed in alphabetical order).
4. Select the Tampa Code of Ordinances.
5. At top right of the next screen, search for dig.
6. The search results will show the appropriate documents you need to read:
7. On click of the first search result (which is the red text, by the way), you get the pertinent information you were looking for:
I now have a general idea of what I can and can’t do, what’s allowed/disallowed under certain conditions, and what I would need a permit for. (I’m purposely not listing the entire text because it would scroll on for too long concerning this article.)
Municode.com allowed me to get this information in seconds.
It should be said that you should not take Municode.com’s existing documentation as gospel as most of the info presented is listed in ‘simple’ layout. When reading up on ordinances, you should confirm they’re accurate by calling the city directly.
Believe me, this is one to keep in your bookmarks because sooner or later you’ll have to look up an ordinance or two.
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