TACOMA, Wash. — The City of Tacoma will soon have new penalties in place for people who litter. It's the first time the city has made changes to its litter laws in more than 25 years.
The changes were approved at a city council meeting on Tuesday.
Last year the City of Tacoma said it spent $2 million cleaning up 4.9 million pounds of debris around the city. But with new penalties now approved, city leaders hope to deter people from illegal dumping trash and littering.
“The key piece for me is signaling to the public that we take it seriously,” said Deputy Mayor John Hines, with the City of Tacoma. “We're going to make sure that the penalties match the crime and encourage people not to treat our city like trash.”
Deputy Mayor Hines said that on Tuesday the Tacoma City Council passed legislation that creates new penalties for littering.
This new litter law makes several changes to city code. It creates a separate category for potentially dangerous litter, like nails and glass, and it removes criminal misdemeanor charges for small amounts of litter. It instead creates a tiered system for fines, where the cost of the fine ranges based off how much trash a person littered. Under this new legislation, some penalties for littering have increased while others have decreased.
In some cases, people may also have the chance at restitution if they clean up whatever they littered. This would allow them to avoid fines.
Any large-scale illegal dumping will still be a gross misdemeanor under this updated legislation.
“At one level, should we be criminally citing people for littering a paper cup on the street? Probably not,” said Hines. “But should we also only be charging people $50 if they litter a whole pickup truck in a neighborhood? No.”
Some people in Tacoma said that they feel the city has been doing a good job of cleaning up litter around the city in the past few months. But they said in the past they have seen things like couches and chairs being dumped, and even almost stepped on dangerous debris.
“In the past I have stepped on glass bottles,” said Franky Marsh, who lives in Tacoma.
Marsh has lived in Tacoma for nearly 30 years and hopes this renewed focus on eliminating litter continues.
“It makes for a better living experience, when you’re out walking,” said Marsh. “I just hope they keep up the idea of keeping this place clean.”
Hines said the city has issues with the dumping of big items in industrial areas and along arterial roads.
Hines said this will be enforced by people reporting dumping and littering to its 311 line, which Hines already said gets a lot of reports.
The new penalties go into effect Monday, May 13.