No Offal, Thank You Very Much

The city's is revising the municipal code.

Ever hear of anything so boring?

Hold your horses.

"Any persons engaged in the collecting of hides, fat, bones and butchers' offal should use a tight box wagon or vehicle with a lid in carrying the same through the streets of this city," reads the 1925 code, Sec. 23.

Offal, for anyone born after 1930, is defined as the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal, according to Wikipedia. Some cultures eat it, some don't.

Our next 1925 gem reads, "No person without a permit from the health officer shall convey the contents of any cesspool or privy vault through any street of the city except in a tight box and between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. and between the first day of November and the first day of May next succeeding."

"Some of these are obselete. Some conflict with state statute or with the charter," said Deputy Corporation Counsel Les Pinter, who is working with Danbury Attorney Rick Gottschalk on this effort.

"You can't drag or pull or push a dead carcus through the streets," said Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton. "Some of it is just bizarre. It's the law of the city so we have to be careful."

In one law that Pinter thinks has been discarded, people are prohibited from "nude swimming in the night season."

"Rick and this office have been slogging through each code and chapter," Boughton said.

The City Council will have to adopt any changes at a formal meeting, but many of the problems are simple passage of time issues. The world has changed and the reality has changed.

Today, septic waste haulers pump septic tanks and dispose of that waste in the daytime, and yes, they use "a tight box" now referred to as a honey wagon. They don't work between 9 p.m and 5 a.m. The disposal sites are closed during those hours.

"It's fun. It's a big project," Pinter said.

One of the ordinances says people can't climb anything in Danbury, no trees, no fences, no buildings, no signs, no polls. nothing.

Another says, "No person shall daub, besmirch or mark any fence, building, tree, hydrant, lamp post or other property." That is an early graffitti ordinance.