Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009

By Jessie Burchette
Salisbury Post
The county’s library director said Monday night that when sex offenders show up at the children’s room, there is little the staff can do.
Jeff Hall, director of the Rowan Public Library, spoke in favor of a proposed ordinance to ban registered sex offenders from parks, the library and some other public facilities.
Hall passed around a thick notebook with names, pictures and other information about the county’s sex offenders. The library staff assembled the book in 2005.
“Most of the offenses are indecent liberties with a minor,” Smith said, adding that a couple of offenders in the book are known library users.
When sex offenders show up in the children’s room, Hall said, staff can ask them to move along, but have no legal right to remove them.
The Planning Board agreed unanimously to recommend approval of the ordinance. It will now go to the Rowan County Board of Commissioners for final action.
A committee of the Planning Board headed by Vice Chairman Mac Butner has been working on the ordinance for several months. Maj. Tim Bost of the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office and Jay Dees, the county’s attorney, worked with the committee to fashion the ordinance.
Butner said the committee worked to make the ordinance “as difficult and legally tough as possible.”
Dees and Ed Muire, the county’s planning director, discussed the proposed ordinance and answered several questions from board members.
They noted that the ordinance is pattered after one adopted in Woodfin, a town north of Asheville. The N.C. Court of Appeals upheld a challenge to that law.
Dr. Ann Furr asked how the American Civil Liberties Union will likely view the ordinance.
Dees expressed confidence in the ordinance, but said potential legal challenges will ultimately decide the quality.
Board member Barbara Lomax posed the scenario of a 19-year-old who ends up as a registered sex offender but then goes on to marry and have children.
“At 40, is he still barred?” she asked.
Dees said he didn’t get into the workings of how the registered sex offender program works.
“If they are a registered sex offender, they fall under the umbrella,” he said.
Muire said the committee used “as broad of a brush stroke as possible,” with the aim of keeping sex offenders away from facilities where children frequent.
In addition to libraries and county parks, sex offenders would also be prohibited from the fairgrounds.
And a provision of the ordinance allows other municipalities or unincorporated area with parks or recreation facilities to adopt the same law and ask to participate.
The Sheriff’s Office will enforce the ordinance outside municipalities. The county will ask police departments to enforce the law in their jurisdictions.
Muire said enforcement will be by the staff and public รณ someone recognizing a sex offender on the premises and calling law enforcement.
“It is not our intent to hire more deputies or put pictures of sex offenders up at all our parks,” said Arnold Chamberlain, chairman of the Board of Commissioners. “If you know there is a sex offender there, we will have a legal remedy. Right now, there is nothing you can do.”
Chamberlain noted that he frequently takes his grandchildren to the parks and that he believes “We’ve all been in the park with a registered sex offender.”
At the outset of the meeting, Butner welcomed one new member, Michael Caskey of Kannapolis. He also welcomed the return of three others who previously served, Furr, Greg Edds and John Linker.
Contact Jessie Burchette at 704-797-4254 or jburchette@salisburypost.com.