For the purpose of this chapter, the following definitions shall apply unless the context clearly indicates or requires a different meaning. When not inconsistent with the context, words used in the present tense include the future, words in the plural number include the singular and words in the singular number include the plural. The word “shall” is always mandatory and not merely directory.
CITY. The City of Spring Hill, Tennessee 37174.
MINOR or JUVENILE. Any unemancipated person under the age of 18 years or, in equivalent phrasing often herein employed, any person 17 or less years of age.
PARENT. Any person having legal custody of a minor:
(1) As a natural or adoptive parent;
(2) As a legal guardian; or
(3) As a person to whom legal custody has been given by order of the court.
POLICE DEPARTMENT. The Police Department of the City of Spring Hill, or any officially designated precinct of said Department.
REMAIN. To stay behind, to tarry and to stay unnecessarily upon the streets, including the congregating of groups (or of interacting minors) totaling four or more persons in which any minor involved would not be using the streets for ordinary or serious purposes such as mere passage or going home. To implement that thought with additional precision and precaution, numerous exemptions are expressly defined in § 11-905 of this chapter so that this is not a mere prohibitory- or presence-type curfew ordinance.
STREET. A way or place, of whatsoever nature, open to the use of the public as a matter of right for purposes of vehicular travel or in the case of time, whether Central Standard Time or Central Daylight Savings Time, generally observed at that hour by the public in the city, prima facie the time when observed in the city’s administrative offices and Police Department.
YEAR OF AGE. Continues from one birthday, such as the seventeenth, to (but not including the day of) the next, making it clear that 17 or less years of age is herein treated as equivalent to the phrase “under 18 years of age”, unless specifically defined differently herein.
(2011 Code, § 11-903)