ordinance i would your honor i'd be delighted but they haven't changed the ordinance but that only applies to the part of the ordinance that allows them to continuously ticket the homeowner for the same violation cited under you're right that the county did change informally change the practice that we thought really was the most onerous that you have to either subject yourself to catastrophic fines or change your property in a way that you don't want to change your property simply because the county says no you have to do have washed you before you have any opportunity to be h any way well let me talk about that for second you know in terms of the pre deprivation hearing you would agree that it doesn't have to take on any for a more formality you don't have to appear room like this in order to be heard right agreed i do agree that i wasn't there really an opportunity to be heard here before the ticket was issued in terms of providing the courtesy letter that was issued and then an opportunity to have a discussion with the officer and to try to dissuade the o issuing the ticket in the first place your honor i don't consider that to be an opportunity to be heard i think the constitution says in the cases that interpret it is it has to be in front of someone who's neutral i don't think that that officer  third party using title to make a decision on you know something like take it in the situation i think you need somebody who is more disinterested in order to satisfy the al that they have now you know that i don't think that's unconstitutional but the problem is i think it is unconstitutional to force us to part with a fine before we have any opportunity to contest the charge that's the problem they have apparently cured the problem with the constant ticketing but i think that that should be placed into the code and thus far even though they said they did it in october of two thousand  parts of violations of the problem even it's code but not this they use it for this but you think it's constitutional i would because it's pretty deprivation and it's a hearing where we can be heard your clients were not subject to th well they were only subject to the not subject to it your honor if you mean they were lucky enough to continuously they've received four tickets two of which were withdrawn but the way the statutes written they could have gotten a ticket every single day it we were definitely exposed to it and it's also important to keep in mind the people work that they send out with those tickets and the paperwork that comes with the courtesy letter tells the people that receive it you're going to be ticketed every single day and if you don't do what we say and also we're if and if you don't pay those tickets they're going to double in thirty days and if you still don't pay those tickets we're going to tell your mortgage company and if you still don't pay those tickets we're going to foreclose on your house and take this why didn't you use a rule show cause you would have i agree with you one hundred sixty nine of the pain the unconstitutional the simple fact of the matter is the supreme court started to struggle with the administrative processes when it got into went through the criminal court system it did not go through administrative process it's a misdemeanor violation it's the same constitution it's the same constitution but the county was not set up to take on this additional workload it did not have the staffing and  personnel if you take a look at the legislation and the whereas flaws in legislation you see that the legislative branch down there said look we're having a problem we're going six months out if we even get a chance in a criminal court there has to be some different ways i that's correct that is legislation in delaware and that how and how it was done one hundred percent of the time because if you cases before we got this legislation but at least in that's a circumstance you have a hearing right so now you say you've you've traded the lengthy delay until we get into criminal court with no hearing that's not correct we have a hearing to hearings on paper if you take a look at isn't the problem here you've got to pay the fine before you get the hearing well there's a there's two issues here i think one when you get a ticket for every day  not in person but there is a there is an issue about whether or not you have to pay the fine ahead of time what kind is it and what the county did was if you had a traditional hearing or also cause hearing there would be a two hundred dollars charge per count you're found guilty a three hundred dollar ministre to fee for having to set up the room hold this hearing that was changed so you could have a fifty dollar was it just a fifty dollars per count fine do you take the possibility in this case of what would have been a seven hundred dollar fine and it turned into a hundred dollar fine you can have all right have been or it could have been a lot higher if they'd follow the letter of the law that said every day that i was six exists is a violation we can issue a ticket every day it could have been a lot higher but you're now we're sort of confused principles here because that's a statutory challenge whether or not the statute can withstand scrutiny is different than the facts of what actually happened in this case so when we look at this this particular issue you've got to look at the counties issue is we're having a problem we're six months out how do we fix this there was a supervisor who testified that he heard about this procedure ticketing before and have thought about doing it the city of wilmington which is an incorporated city in newcastle county actually adopted a ticketing ordinance the same exact orders with one very very important difference the city of wilmington came in and they just issue tickets when the county sat down with the city and talked to legislators the legislature said we don't want to issue tickets we would like to give people because we're not interested in making money we're interested and have the proper security that's why we're here in the first place is the advance notice the courtesy letter that struck the person letters at the paper here you're talking about no the curse letter was a notice in this case that was sent out is that these are the these are the violations that we can this particular case it also had a contact number they were going out of town they contacted us and said we're going out of town we have an extension kind of said that's fine there's a code officer had many meetings with them spoke with him about whether and what the violations were there was disagreement about statute which is how we ended up here but you have to go back and look at it the matthews case and all of the matthews cases it's that sort of third circuit is using mathews cases also talks about this balancing you really have to bounce the interests of the parties and that's his was a social security case and it's still a deprivation of property case there's the probation firing cases there's all kinds of deprivation of proper cases are far more severe than one hundred dollars at issue in this case you know in this case that you have to pay a five hundred dollars fee to appeal there there is an appeal field fee in the code that predated this legislation that appeal fee is for the role so cause hearing or any other ministration hearing to go before this board that had nothing to do this legislation this legislation just happened to use that  what kind of cases the role the show cause started for inspections cases which were building code violations very much of that be used for this also why shouldn't if you have a bundle of that it's such a simple procedure i mean if you go down to city hall where they do these things all the time you wouldn't have a lot of time it would you know one after the other you have a a long list most people wouldn't show up because you say that's what happened here well then change the rules then you would have them ready you know we have it there you have it we have and then the government would have to spend more money we have to get more resources in there you have to follow the constitution in order to to and we think we are following the fairly significant risk of an erroneous ticketing i mean when you've got about fifty percent of the appeals that the written appeals resulting in a reversal i don't know that it's significant because all we really have  is a statistic out there that says there's a hearing office in there it's getting rid of fifty percent of the case that's what they rely on the only testimony that talks about that is from the supervisor of the couldn't force meet you and the supervisor talks about the t ypes of cases that are that are being gotten rid of or are being found not guilty by the hearing officer and this is the only facts on the others besides the percentage is the recipient was incapacitated the recipient needed additional time politics the hearing officer gets rid of it so what you really have here is matters of fairness and a hearing officer that's getting more due process and perhaps he should what i wonder is it property maintenance companies that are exempted or who's exempted from this the exemption covers property i'm sorry maintenance corporation in delaware when you build the community you're you're required by law to have some open space that open space has to maintain a region of the members of the community people live in the first looks at the private interest that's being affected by the procedure in place and the third prong looks at the government's interest that's being at issue with respect to the instant ticketing system let's look at the third one what is the got what is the county trying to prevent by way of this instant access because they've said on this record more than once that their whole focus here is not the constitution it's it's prevention it's in foresman and they also make a million to approximately a year off of this at fifty dollars a ticket so but what they're trying to do is prevent and i'm not saying these things are important high grass bags of trash like we had they called this this brush pile debris so if you have too many sticks in your yard they want to do something about that if your trees aren't trimmed over the sidewalks well enough they want to do something like that ok let's compare that to the private interests at stake the private interests that's at stake is a homeowner's ability to enjoy quietly his or her use of their property so dixon trash and things and high grass are important but if you look at the you know bad in case and the james in your good case i mean those cases say that a person's ability or the person's right to be secure and left alone in the comfort of their own whom is something that our entire constitution is based on so you can't commit if you put that that private right on the same screen with the keeping the cut keeping the grass cut is barely even visible in terms of its constitutional importance is this an as applied challenger challenging the ordinance as applied to the mores or is it  honor i you know that came up sort of came out of the blue in the middle of the briefing below but i frankly didn't think of it that way but i'm saying that this thing is incomplete you know which way that i didn't think of it either way i we were told in september and i don't want to get off track with the question the answer the question it's both it's both it's as applied to anybody there's no way that newcastle county can apply these appeal procedures to anybody cinema all those cases there's no way the new castle county can apply these appeal procedures as they're written now or as they did him with respect to the the morrises and satisfy due process because first you have to pay first before you have any opportunity to to contest the charge and second if they want they can continue to ticket you until you give up well that's not what they actually do they can it says that they can your honor and they haven't amended their statute and they've had an opportunity to do it and they said that they change their policy informally because of this case and i'm sure it's because of the the district court september twenty nine or september twenty one two thousand and ten ruling that said that hey there's a problem here and we want to look into it ok thank