The Turlock City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to extend public park-use hours throughout the city.

As currently stated under Title 10, Chapter 1, Section 14(r) of the city’s municipal code, no person shall “be, remain, stay, or loiter in any public park between the hours of dusk and 7 a.m. of the following day, except as provided by resolution of the council or as provided in this chapter.”

The council approved to amend the code to change the hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following day.

“Adjusting the time will allow residents more opportunities to use the park and be less challenging for enforcing our Turlock municipal code when needed,” said Erik Schulze, the city’s public works director. “The 10 p.m. time coincides with the lighted hours of Crane Park tennis courts, which has been longstanding."

Police chief Jason Hedden told the council that enforcing park hours isn’t something the department has traditionally enforced that heavily.

“You have pickleball players out there,” said Hedden. “And even though the courts are lit up, it’s still dusk, which would prevent them from being in the park or using the park. There’s a lot of people that use the parks in the evening. They get off work at 6, 7 o’clock when it may be dark already.”

The change in verbiage makes enforcement easier, according to the chief.

“My direction to staff is that we are moving forward with enforcing the park hours,” said Hedden. “We’ve had a number of issues at the parks in terms of vandalism. Nothing good goes on in the park after 10, 11, midnight. But a lot of our residents are using the park, even with the dusk hours. … This makes it a little more clear and easier for us to enforce across the board.”

Turlock resident Ron Bridegroom, during the public-comment period, chided the council for dragging its feet in making these changes. He quoted from the council meeting of Aug. 23, 2022, in which councilmember Rebecka Moniz, who represents District 2, said that city attorney George Petrulakis “is aware we have some ordinances in the Turlock municipal code that need to be modified and changed,” and that public park rules were “archaic as the dinosaur age and need to be updated.”

The council also voted Tuesday to repeal a section of the municipal code that deals with camping in public parks.

According to 10-1-11 of the municipal code, “overnight camping by youth organizations for persons 15 years of age and under and their chaperones” is permitted in public parks “in conjunction with a special event permit.”

However, the overnight camping permit is seldom, if ever, used.

“This is something that I haven’t seen in my career, where we’ve had anybody come forward and make this request,” Schulze told the council. “In order to ensure consistency with the Turlock municipal code, staff recommends removing this section concurrent with the recommended change in the park hours.”