Being an EOE (equal opportunity editorialist), it is only fair that we take a look at Avalon's proposed "excessive calls" ordinance with the same jaundiced eye used to evaluate Bellevue's "nuisance tenant" ordinance a few years ago. Both fall into the same category of well-intentioned efforts that have taken the form of terrifyingly bad laws.

In both ordinances, people are fined for doing nothing more than having the police show up at their homes -- or businesses. While Avalon's ordinance does not make the same amusing mistake as Bellevue's in assuming that the only troublemakers in town are renters, it also fails to distinguish between calls to residential properties and calls to commercial properties.

First of all, the Avalon ordinance's claim that people who require police services more should pay more for the privilege of seeing said police is pure bunk. That one was thought up by a lawyer somewhere, who was biting his tongue the entire time. If you want to advance that theory, then a whole lot of people need to stop paying their school property taxes right now. People who go to Florida for the winter shouldn't have to pay for nonexistent garbage collection at home in the North. If local governments go to a fee for service basis, everyone will suffer. The reality is that we all chip in a little for services that we may never utilize just so that those services exist in case we ever do need them.

This ordinance has to be interpreted in one of two ways. Either it fines everyone who has the police come to their home or business more than twice in a 30-day period, or it gives the police the discretion to decide who is going to be fined. Either way, the effect is chilling.

The ordinance does not talk about discretion. It says every call to police over two per 30-day period is, no two ways about it, excessive and the property owner has to pay $100 per call. This ordinance only has to stop one person from calling the police at a time when that person really, really needs help and the effect will be tragic. Like it or not, bad situations occur in the best of homes, in the best of communities...domestic violence, troubled teenagers, problem neighbors. The last thing we need to do is make people hesitate before picking up a phone and calling 9-1-1 to avail themselves of the precise service their tax dollars fund.

Avalon officials say that the ordinance will not be used to penalize legitimate service calls. What exactly are legitimate service calls? Are they the ones that come from people the police like? The ordinance doesn't tell us what a good police call is and which ones are bad.

That being said, the ordinance advances a hidden -- barely -- agenda in which the government gets to decide who is worthy of taking advantage of government services and who isn't. The government gets to do a bit of social engineering and decide who should be allowed to live in a town and who should be "encouraged" to live elsewhere. It hasn't been that long since these types of laws were used to target racial and ethnic minorities, people of various religious faiths and others the government thinks don't "fit in." Who's next in the crosshairs? Muslims? Gays? People with large dogs? How about someone who has a dispute with a government official or is critical of the police department? This ordinance empowers exactly that kind of horrifying behavior. Maybe today's official's won't abuse the power they're giving themselves, but this law won't be automatically repealed when new elected or appointed officials take over in the future.

We understand the need people feel to improve their community. We also understand the impulse to grab at any straw in an attempt to right what some may see as a sinking ship. What people need to remember is that the present conditions didn't magically appear overnight, and they're not going to go away that fast either.

There are laws on the books to punish people for bad behavior. Enforce the laws that exist. If it means arresting the same person six times a month, so be it. Eventually they'll end up with a jail sentence or decide to move to a place where they won't get arrested all the time. Either way, the same end will be reached without creating a situation that just cries out for abuse.