I do not often attend the Shepherdstown Town Council meetings, because I can’t take the excitement – and that is not snark. So much on the other side of silence, in George Eliot’s phrase, comes up, that I might go deaf.

Take the latest, reported on in The Shepherdstown Chronicle and The Journal earlier this month. The one during which was approved an unjust disorderly conduct ordinance — the new law only one member of Town Council voted against, Marty Amerikaner, who learned by listening to someone, why the law is unfair.

The law is unfair because one fined under it has to pay for a lawyer to contest its validity. As Marty learned, one is not entitled to a public defender for breaking a law punishable by a fine.

If one is fined by mistaken assessment — go google, do deep dives on citizens fined for uncontrollable seizures, for having Tourette’s Syndrome disease, for prescribed meds side effects, for vertigo or even for defending oneself loudly because of being physically attacked — and is poor, they must pay and take a conviction. It is a criminal conviction and it can stain a person’s life.

Such is the case for one Reddit user whose post I recently read online.

“If someone is charged with disorderly conduct 3, a class 3 misdemeanor, can they still be a cop? That’s the only thing on my adult record, and I really wanna be a cop,” the person wrote.

Stories of Martinsburg police ticketing the homeless and new folks to the city who are lost, as they walk home after two beers, still circulate years later — a possibility of abuse Shepherdstown does not have to worry about, fortunately.

Everyone on the Town Council should have voted against this ordinance after hearing what Marty learned. Boo on the rest of them.

I can’t wait for the next Town Council meeting.

Mark Kohut, of Shepherdstown