July 20, 2026
Jonathan Rich
BrevardBeagle.com
Monday night Brevard City Council heard a proposal about changing local ordinances to address recent complaints about loitering, trespassing, carrying concealed weapons, failure to leave public property when notified and public intoxication / illegal drug possession on city-owned property.
These violations are currently punishable with civil penalties, which law enforcement said are ineffective to curbing repeat occurrences. New violations could become misdemeanors with fines up to $500.
Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper said that in 2021 the North Carolina General Assembly passed a statute which decriminalized many local ordinances regarding public behavior. Hooper said the city of Brevard’s proposal on these incidents would add certain offenses to the list and correct the wording on ordinances that Council attempted to change in 2021/2022 to create an exemption to the state statute.
During a public hearing Monday night, the city specifically said it wants to add misdemeanor penalties to those offenses, assign clear operating hours to certain city properties that did not previously have them, and direct police to remove anyone camping on public property.
Brevard Police Chief Christy Wentzell stressed that the proposed changes are for local law enforcement to address objectionable behavior in public and will apply to all offenders rather than focusing on a specific downtown demographic or person.
“The proposal that is before the Council is more about addressing behavior and applies equally to everyone,” Chief Wentzell explained. “If we look at someone who is trespassing at a closed business property or in a city park after hours or obstructing sidewalks, violating alcohol restrictions outside of our social district, or refusing to leave city property after being lawfully asked to do so, our response is based on the behavior and not the individual.”
“The expectation is the same for everyone: If someone chooses not to comply after being given a reasonable opportunity to do so, our officers at the Brevard Police Department need appropriate options to resolve the situation” she continued.
Wentzell said the proposed changes will not require her officers to make arrests for violations and do not change the overall philosophy of her department. She also told Council members that the UNC School of Government advised that the best practice for law enforcement agencies is to enforce general state statutes over local ordinances in regards to issues such as trespassing or carrying concealed weapons.
“It simply restores an effective enforcement option when education, warnings and repeated efforts to gain voluntary compliance have been unsuccessful,” she said. “Right now our officers have been responding to a multitude of complaints and calls for service regarding these underlying issues, whether it’s loitering in general or open consumption of alcohol. By restoring these ordinances … we will be able to provide officers with a legally recognized law enforcement option when it is appropriate.”
“Alternatively, this proposal is not about making more arrests,” Wentzell concluded, “I believe it is about giving the police officers the ability to effectively resolve the current problems, protect our businesses and public spaces, and assuring those who visit, live, and work in Brevard remain safe and welcome.”
In response to those remarks, Council members asked Wentzell to get more detailed information about the frequency and locations of violations that have recently taken place downtown and bring that data before them at a later date.
“As the chair of the Public Safety Committee, we have looked at this and all of these previously had misdemeanor penalties attached to them … some of this is just reinstating things that were previously in existence,” said Mayor Pro Tem Aaron Baker. “This is not about our police officers or any observation of mine that there is any sort of ‘over-arresting’ happening, but when we’re talking about things like loitering that potential is there because it’s hard to make loitering into a black-and-white issue. We do our best with the language we’ve got in here, but it can be awfully grey … I do think we could implement some sort of reporting at the public safety level where we hear about this more often.”
Councilman Dean Lytle was more direct in addressing the implications changing the local ordinances could have for Brevard’s growing homeless / unhoused population and the general public.
“I think this doesn’t just speak to those folks; it speaks to anyone who is in violation,” Lytle said. “I think the reporting is a good suggestion and I think that it is important that if this were to pass that it has the intended consequence. What does enforcement or lack of enforcement look like now and what does it look like exactly after this passes if it is to be passed?”
No action was taken on the proposal Monday night, but it will come back to Brevard City Council for more discussion and possibly a vote later this summer.