The city’s controversial juvenile curfew received heavy revisions Thursday after council members debated against the harm of placing children in the court system and supported safety efforts and keeping youth off the streets.

Children age 18 and younger will be held to a curfew that makes it illegal to be on the streets between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. However, they will only receive a citation for a Class D misdemeanor if previously issued two warnings. This curfew extension will last until Oct. 1, when a stakeholder workgroup, commissioned by council, is scheduled to recommend alternative approaches to curfew laws.

Council decided whether to extend a curfew ordinance that is set to expire on Sunday. Every three years, for the last 27 years, the council has voted to extend the curfew, which prohibits children younger than age 18 from being out on the streets from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.—during the school year—and 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. The item brought out a large audience of city youth, youth advocates, and public safety experts.

Council voted to “extend” a heavily amended version of the curfew policy on Thursday. According to City Attorney Anne Morgan, because it the ordinance was fundamentally different, it would take 10 days for it to go into effect—June 26. So technically, there will be an eight-day gap in which the curfew is unenforceable. The item first came to council during a work session in April.

District 4 Council Member Greg Casar led the fight against the curfew since the beginning of the debate, calling the policy a poor use of city resources, disproportionately applied geographically and racially, and has the potential to cause more harm than good for the youth by unnecessarily sending them through the justice system pipeline early.

“I’m disappointed that the City Council did not affirm what data and the lived experiences of many young people in Austin have clearly shown for the last 27 years,” Casar said in a statement. “The Austin juvenile curfew ordinance targets harmless behavior, wastes [scarce] public safety resources, and disproportionately harms young people of color.”

Austin Police Chief Brian Manley voiced his support for the curfew, saying its elimination would hurt the department’s ability to keep the city’s streets, and its youth, safe.

It took two hours, failed votes and many different versions of the ordinance before council was able to reach a majority of support. In a separate, but related item, council voted unanimously to create a stakeholder workgroup to come up with recommendations for alternatives to a curfew in keeping children safe and off the streets.