At Monday’s Knoxville City Council meeting, the council passed an ordinance to restrict camping in areas not designated as campgrounds to what the city calls major events. These are limited to the 360 Nationals, 410 Nationals and Late Model Nationals. City Manager Aaron Adams says that this will help keep a positive image of the city.

“For most folks, they’re not going to see a really big change. If you have that relationship where you have people coming to visit, maybe coming from another state and bringing a camper and using your yard, we want that to continue, we know those are big events, we know they’re an important part of our community, we want to be supportive and allow camping as much as possible during those events. What we’re really trying to do is help preserve quality of life and the integrity of the town by not allowing camping in non-campground areas outside of those three weeks. That’s what the code really helps us to do, is to have a little more enforcement against those who are camping in non-campground designated areas year-round.”

The passing of the ordinance ends a nearly two-month process of introducing the ordinance and tweaking its language at council meetings. A complete city council recap with City Manager Aaron Adams can be heard on today’s Let’s Talk Knoxville.