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Carmel committee squares up micro-mobility ordinance to give police clearer enforcement tools
Summary
Committee members discussed a revised draft of the micro-mobility ordinance to clarify e-bike vs. e-motor device definitions, add prohibited behaviors (burnouts, drifting), and expand enforcement including fines and impoundment provisions.
The Carmel Land Use and Special Studies Committee spent most of its meeting on a revised micro-mobility ordinance aimed at giving police clearer tools to identify and remove dangerous devices from the city's paths and public spaces. Sergei Grushuk, the citys legal authority, told the committee the ordinance will focus on definitional clarity and enforcement options after the council recently amended the original proposal to retain only impoundment and forfeiture provisions.
"We received feedback from our police department that they would like to have those options sooner rather than later," Grushuk said, explaining why impoundment and forfeiture language was kept on the council agenda. He said the administration is also reviewing an "objective matrix" for building openings based on heat index as a separate administrative matter tied to other code updates.
Committee members and officers emphasized that the ordinance is intended primarily to regulate dangerous behavior rather than to broadly expand what devices are allowed in public spaces. Major Shane Collins of the Carmel Police Department said recent enforcement paired with outreach has helped, but that more-observable prohibited behaviors will make enforcement more practical in the field: "We had a task force set up for a couple weeks to where we had 6 or 7 officers out on the Monon, strategic locations..." Collins said, describing the short pilot.
