Music Thank you. It's a few minutes after 1. This is the February 5th, 2013 Public Safety Meeting. First on On our agenda is approval of the summary. Approval. Approval. Second. I have a motion and a second for the approval of the summary. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. And next on our agenda is the nuisance abatement forms update. David Jarvis will... Afternoon, committee members. If you will turn to your agenda, I think it's marked page 2, but it's actually page 3 of the agenda. This is the revised 24-hour nuisance abatement form that we're proposing on using. Mike Sanner and I, along with Andrew James, drafted this together. And we feel it's a pretty good document. It accomplishes what we need to do. without really trying to reinvent the entire wheel. So it clearly states that the 24-hour notice to obeyed, and that, again, there it talks about the appeal process, and then it talks about if code enforcement must appeal it, then there can be fees for the abatement and also administrative fees involved. But mainly it highlights the appeals process a little bit more clear. So we feel good about it. Thank you, David. I have some council members that have questions. Okay. Council Member Clark. Good evening, David. I have some questions. Things don't seem very clear to me. I know some of this has to be quoted probably just like the ordinance is read, so forgive me if I don't know exactly what that is. But just even the very first statement, it says, you're given a notice to abate within 24 hours or appeal this notice within 10 days. Now, that's just really not clear to me. I don't quite understand. In other words, it's saying that you really don't have to do it in 24 hours if you appeal it within 10 days. That's how I read it. Well, I think the last paragraph really makes that a little more clear. And the reason that 10 days is in there, like you said, under the ordinance, you have 10 days to appeal any action by code enforcement. What you would be appealing in that 10 days would probably be the issuance of the notice, not the abatement itself. because the abatement would have taken place. What happens if you're issued a notice from code, each notice that you're issued, there's a subsequent penalty with each notice, and they add up as you go along. Say we issued a 24-hour notice and you came in four or five days later and you appealed it. Well, you'd be appealing the actual notice, not the abatement. The last paragraph, next to the last paragraph, talks about you must remove the items within 24 hours or you'd be billed for the abatement. Yes. Right. So really you have the 10-day. you have the right to appeal our action. Okay. So those two statements seem to be a little confusing to me. And if I was reading it from scratch, I would not quite understand what I was seeing there. And so, in other words, if they do what you ask them to do, say they've removed the couch from the front yard within 24 hours, why then would they appeal? Just to get it off the record. Well, exactly, to not count against them. You may have multiple property owners that have several properties in certain areas of town that they receive more than one notice a year. It could count against them as far as the fine table goes or the number of notices. So you may want to appeal that. Maybe the tenant said it out there. You got rid of it, and you don't want it to be charged against you as that first strike. The main thing I want is just to be sure that it's clear to somebody reading this the first time. They say, okay, make it really clear, clear language. so that there's no question about what is expected of them. Sure. If you could take a look at that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, David. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Massadi. Thank you. Hi, David. Just how pervasive is this problem? I mean, I see on my slideshow here that we have here only six districts. I just want to know how serious this problem is. You know, it's really cyclical. It really depends on, you know, we have a lot of issues in the U.K. area. Of course, when there's a lot of rental property, we have a lot of sit-outs. There, when we were going through the foreclosure process, there were a lot of properties that were involved because of the properties being foreclosed and all the contents being thrown out in the front yard. So it's really, it comes in stages. And I think you're mixing up the next presentation. The slides, I think, are for... I am. I apologize. I guess that's okay. I'd still like to know how... Sure, right. Yeah, sure. It depends. We've had as high as 50 a year, and we've had as low as 10. So it really just depends on what's going on. And are you saying that most of this has to do with landlords that are absentee landlords? I mean, your majority? Absolutely. And what's your ability to get in touch with these absentee landlords and get this problem corrected? Right. Well, one of the things that Andrea suggested, which we really like on the forum, is where we attempted to contact the owner, whether it be through phone call, whether we have an e-mail address or PVA, however we can try to track that owner down and say, look, you've been cited, it's been posted on the property, you've got 24 hours to abate this notice, and then they'll initial it and date it when they tried to make the attempt. because what we do, this form will be in a two-part form. There will be the front cover page that the inspector will fill out. The back will be a harder copy, a harder stock of paper. That will be posted on the property. And at the end of the 24 hours, we'll make the determination whether to debate or not. And typically, there are usually public safety issues. When the debris is out in the roadway, there's food or diapers involved. I mean, sort of the things that really could create a real hazard. I understand what you're saying. I'm just wondering about the response from the owners. I mean, are you getting in contact with them, and are they actually being the ones who are being cited and taking care of the problem? Yes, yes, we do. So you do have a pretty good response in that respect. Right, and we're hoping this form will even get us more response. Basically, this is giving you all more teeth, I'm assuming. Right, exactly. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I just have a question sort of as a new person, I suppose. What is the process for if you provide this abatement notice and then there are fines levied? And what happens when a property owner continues to ignore the abatement and all of the notices and all of the fines? And what is the process then? Well, we bill the owner for the cost of the abatement and any fines. They're billed directly to the owner. If the fines aren't paid within 20 days, we put a lien on the property. And as the liens escalate on the property, once they hit a certain amount that the law department deems is necessary, then we'll go after the property in foreclosure. And we do that? A lot. Okay. We file lots of liens, several hundred thousand dollars a year. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Mr. Jarvis, this form that's on page two, how does this differ from what you're currently using? The previous form we had wasn't clear enough on the 24-hour notice. What we would normally do, in the sake of saving time and resources, we'd just write 24 hours across it and post it on the property. And it wasn't clear. It was brought up in the last public safety meeting that we really needed to clean that up, that we need to have a specific form for 24-hour abatements and not to use our regular 14-day form. So is any of the verbiage much different than down through? It's more clear of our intent to abate within 24 hours. Before, we could write on the form, and, of course, we put our names and numbers on there, and we beg them to call us. And this just lays it out more clear that our intent in 24 hours is to abate the property and build the owner. All right, and just one more. So in looking at this, where these words are in bold letters, is that to bring emphasis, or does that show difference between the current form and the new form? Both. That's to bring emphasis and to show the difference between the old form and the new. That's right. And we've even considered making this a different color, maybe bright orange or something to really bring attention to it. I wouldn't be against that, but I think this is a good start towards an exclamation point when these are put out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lawless. One additional thing. Previously, they did not have a form for emergency abatement. They had to improvise, and that understandably, So they didn't have the tools, and so that was the discussion for the new folks and folks that maybe weren't on public safety last time. And we now have, which I'm very thrilled with, three or four years ago, we got escalating fines for individual property because for a lot of people it was the cost of doing business. And certainly sometimes they're owner-occupied, not as many, but we have some of those around. That's right. But a lot of times these things really pose a public safety hazard, and it is an emergency to abate them. And I can think of several different instances where that was the case, several way more than I'd like to. And so I think it's about tweaking it and giving it, making it clear and following the law, et cetera. Thank you, and thank you. If I could comment, as Council Member Lawless said, these are for emergency situations. Therefore, when it's out in the middle of the road, it's blocking the sidewalks. It's a real public safety issue. Food, again, things like that that pose a real hazard. You know, you've got couches and mattresses laying in the middle of, you know, High Street. Well, we can't have that. Thank you. Council Member Lane has not spoken yet. Thank you. On the 24-hour notice to abate document, I just had a couple of quick questions. The first one is, you're hereby given notice to abate. What is the method by which you would give notice? Well, we would post this on the property, and then we would make an effort to contact the owner either phone, email. We're going to try every effort we can to contact him, but the quickest way to do it for us is to post it on the property. And under Chapter 12, it's considered served under the local ordinance. Okay, that's in the local ordinance? Yes. All right. Okay, the other thing that's a little bit unclear is in the fourth paragraph. It says, if you do not abate this nuisance within 24 hours or appeal this notice within this period, is that a 24-hour period we're talking about or a 10-day period? 10-day period it is. Okay. I think that needs to be clarified. Okay. And then the other question I had is where it says, let me find that where I noted it here. That was in the other ordinance, but what it was, it was the definition of premises, and I'll ask that when we get into the other ordinance over there. You know, the term emergency, how do you define what an emergency is in this document? Really three criteria. a public safety issue, you know, it's impeding the flow of traffic or it's impeding the sidewalk. Or, again, it poses a health risk, food, you know, again, diapers, that sort of thing. Okay. And that's usually the only time really we use this criteria. We usually typically use our 14-day notification. They're mailed. You have 10 days to appeal. And then if we have to abate within 14 days, then we abate it. This is just something. This is just an emergency corrective matter that, you know, we have to address because there are issues when, you know, this comes up. Well, when you do the abatement, would you do it immediately? If they don't do it within 24 hours, then you will do the abatement? We would. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm new on this committee, so my question may be a little bit vague here, but I'll pick this up pretty quick. Thank you. Thanks. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. So for clarification, first you mentioned that there was the definition of emergency. You said there were three factors, and you mentioned two, public safety and health risk. Is there three or just the two? Well, we say furniture could be one, and then, again, food, diapers, that sort of thing, could be two, and then the impeding flow of traffic, that sort of thing. We say three. It's probably more like two. Okay. And so to that question, on the checkboxes, I guess in the third section it has trash and debris, indoor furniture outside, and public safety. Do we need those checkboxes if it really just boils down to a public safety issue? We do. I think it explains it a little bit better. You know, the average citizen may not know what a public safety issue is. I mean, if we can check off trash and debris, indoor furniture, we can let them know more clearly. on our 14-day notice, we have a junk vehicle on them, and we actually put the license number of the vehicle in that box to let them know which vehicle we're talking about. And then in sections, the first paragraph and the fourth, both of them seem to imply that you must either abate within 24 hours or you have the option to appeal within 10 days. And so I think that we should not have or in there. It seems like we should, you're hereby given notice to abate, period, and then you have the right to appeal within 10 days. I mean, right? I agree. And if you look at the paragraph next to the last one, it says, but you must remove the items within 24 hours or you'll be billed for the abatement, period. So that's why I think that that does not match up with paragraph four and one that gives you the option of or, like Ed pointed out, or Council Member Lane. And again, in the fourth paragraph, it says if you do not abate within 24 hours or appeal, then the government will abate the nuisance. But if we're going to abate it within 24 hours, then the 10-day appeal is irrelevant. Not necessarily, because the 10 days... But we're still going to abate it regardless. Right, but we still have to let them know of the right to appeal. Correct, correct. I just think that or is misunderstanding or something. Sorry, confusing, that's the word. Thank you. Council Member Clark. I'm going to beat a dead horse here, David. Your very first sentence is, I think, has some real dangerous wording, and I'm going to go back to the or, because it implies that you can do this within 24 hours or you can appeal within 10 days. And it says very clearly you have a choice. And I think that poses some danger to your intentions. We may want to bring that last sentence from the next to the last paragraph up and add it to that one. Yeah, something like that. Because we're going to evade it and we're going to bill you for it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Good point. Thank you. Sure. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Myers hasn't spoken, so. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I would say the same lines that we just heard, that maybe if you just change that first sentence and just take that out and just say that you are hereby given notice to abate and that you must remove within 24 hours or you will be billed for the abatement and just leave it at that. And then somewhere else in there, let them know that they have a right to appeal. Now, if that happens and I appeal, you said I'm not appealing the abatement. I'm appealing. If I appeal, what am I appealing? You would appeal the actual number of times you've been cited within a year. You could even appeal the abatement cost. I mean, if you felt that the costs were exorbitant, you could appeal it to a hearing officer. Hearing officer has a right to waive it or impose it. What if you just changed that to you've hereby been given notice to abate and then tell them they have to abate within 24 hours, period. I like it. And then somewhere else in the letter, tell them that they have a right to appeal, maybe down at the bottom. Sure. But all those sentences that say 24 hours or take all those out and just make it clear, you must have made this in 24 hours and we're going to do it for you. Thank you. Councilor Whitmer Lane. Thank you. The other question, this has to be on a person's property, but what if it's in the adjacent property that's not their property? For example, if it's on a sidewalk that's in a public sidewalk or in the street in front of the property, how does that, do you have the right to do that also? On the curb would be considered their property. Under Chapter 12, it states that the property owner owns to the, even the sidewalk abutting the property is their responsibility. So it would still be their responsibility if it was in front of the property. Okay. Do you think it would be helpful to put that in here also just so that the person would not be confused? Because say, well, this is not on my property sitting out on the sidewalk. Sure. And even if somebody else left it there, they might say, well, it's still on the sidewalk. I didn't put it there. It's not my property. But they're still liable. I think the more clarification and transparency we can have on this, the less problems we'll have in the future. The other thing I was going to ask is the ability to appeal a notice to abate, is that a new right under this agreement or is that an existing one? No, you've never had the ability to appeal an abatement. You would just be appealing this 24-hour notice so the strikes wouldn't count against you. Now, you may be able to argue in front of a hearing officer of the cost, but you've never been able to appeal an abatement before. Okay, so you don't know whether anybody will even use this or not. Okay. And the worst-case scenario is that if the city is found to have done this without due to process or without adequate rationale, then we would just have to pay for the abatement. That would be our liability. That's right, because the items are already on the curb anyway. Okay. All right. Thank you again. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. I'm sorry I don't have photographs. I, during move in and move out and game time, football game time, et cetera, I walk all around the district. And I taught, you know, because a lot of the occupants have never lived off campus or away from home, et cetera. But when there's an emergency abatement, that is an extreme measure. measure. For instance, dirty diapers, unbundled trash. I went in one place and they had a bunch of broken, really long fluorescent light tubes that were broken and sticking up in a box if somebody had fallen. I knocked on their door and I said, you know, you've got all this unbundled trash. They won't take it. This is a danger. The young people living there said, oh, thank you so much. They went and took care of it. So I do a lot. And I think code enforcement, waste management, UKPD, our police, you know, work really hard to let them know. And there are a lot of, you know, the house has never been a problem before. And I'll look up the landlord and say, you know, I don't know if you know this is going on. And a lot of times they're, oh, my goodness, no, I didn't know. Thank you so much. And I'll say Mr. Jarvis and his folks have hunted down some people in my district that we didn't have a dress for, we didn't, you know, whatever, that one woman in Florida, you found her cell phone in Florida, I still don't know how you did that. And she didn't know. And she moved up here and remodeled. So, again, these are extreme measures where somebody might get hurt. And a lot of times if it's on the neighboring property, you can very well tell its overflow from the stacks that are on the property it came from. And we've had a history with furniture, especially in the U.K. area, during the U.K. football games. They set them on fire, and, you know, so it's a real issue over there in that area. Council Member Massadi. One last question, David. Do we have the personnel to be able to enforce all this? I know that code enforcement has always had a lot on their plate. How many more officers? I mean, what have we gotten, two since I was here last time? Is that about right? Yeah, we're fully staffed. We have an opening right now that we're currently in the process of filling, and it's a nuisance control officer. So you feel like we do have the personnel to be able to enforce these regulations and can do so? Absolutely. Thank you. I have some questions. It's committees. I don't see anyone else signed up. But, David, can you paint me a picture of what someone, a property given a 24-hour notice would look like? Well, typically it depends on what area. If we're around campus, it's usually furniture, a lot of furniture. For some odd reason, they wait until the last day of the semester and they throw all their belongings out in the front yard. So that's typically, you know. And then there are other areas of town that people get set out. The landlords will set them out. I've been dealing with the landlords, though, going to their meetings and making them aware of the loaner box program and the things they can do where they don't have to put all of the belongings right out on the curb. So, you know, our efforts are paying off because we do our door hanger program in the U.K. area twice a year, beginning of every semester. So we're seeing a lot less of this. But, you know, typically I've seen entire households on the curb out in the middle of Columbia Avenue before or High Street or, you know, State Street. And then, you know, lo and behold, here comes a weekend, a football game, and all the couches are set on fire. And, you know, then the fire department's having to deal with it, and we're having to shut down State Street. So, you know, it really can escalate into a real problem if we don't jump on it and take care of it. I know, you know, the issue I've had with this in my district would be typically like an eviction where a person, the whole inside of that property, everything on the inside was set on the curb. Sure. And then people rummage through it and it gets spread out. And I know we had talked about possibly requiring them to get one of the loaner boxes, but I could see that as being a problem. It's like at what point do you need a loaner box? Yeah. You know, it's like, okay, is it one room of furniture or is it three rooms of furniture and so forth? So that could be difficult. But if none of the other committee members have any comments, I would suggest, David, if you could take the recommendations that the council members have made and bring this back to us at our next public safety committee meeting. Sure. I'll be glad to. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Lawless. Just one thing. I would suggest that this card be a fluorescent pink or something that, yes, thank you. Sounds good. Thank you, David. Next on our agenda is the hazardous materials ordinance and Commissioner Mason. I'm simply here to introduce this because Battalion Chief Greg Baer with the fire department is the resident expert. And if you read through some of this, there's words in there I wouldn't attempt to pronounce and concepts that are very, very technical in nature. Chief Baer is going to provide a very brief overview of this. Basically, this is to clean up an ordinance that is kind of old and outdated in some ways, especially from when it was written in 1996 until now when the HAZMAT program is under fire now versus under emergency management when this ordinance was originally drafted. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Council, for looking at this ordinance. The Commissioner mentioned this goes back all the way to 1996 when emergency management ran hazardous materials that are principal interest in Fayette County. And what we wanted to do was to have a current ordinance that reflect the Division of Fire and what we do in our hazardous materials program. And so that's what this does. A lot of the language has been cleaned up. A lot of the committees that were formed under emergency management that we haven't done since the Division of Fire has taken over that are no longer necessary have been removed. And a lot of the functions that were done, taken over by the state, such as the underground storage tank and fuel tank inspection, had been removed from the ordinance. And the previous ordinance had Fayette County folks doing that. And so we just basically wanted to have an ordinance that reflected our current operations. Any questions? Council Member Lane. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming down. Would you say that this new ordinance would meet the best practices for the handling of hazardous materials? Absolutely. It has a couple things in there that, as far as best practices, the spill control plan, which is a current best practice, and also the Tier 2 reporting, which is extremely hazardous substances in sight that are required to report not only to the fire department but to LEPC. And that goes all the way back to the Superfund Amendment Act in 1986, which basically says you just can't dump your hazardous materials outside and stuff. So we wanted to be responsible. And looking at what's happened with the EPA itself, we want to kind of ward off any further problems with that. And you've reviewed this ordinance in detail. and would you recommend to us to have this approved as our final document? Absolutely. It's been about a year into working and working with law and working with other agencies such as the EPA and finding out what emergency management's thoughts were on this and why things have changed in the State Fire Marshal's office. So, yes, this final document reflects what we should do as best practices. Okay. Thank you very much. Does any other committee member have a comment? Council Member Lawless? I assume that this also reflects the OSHA requirements. Yes, ma'am. Any OSHA requirements will be reflected in 1910-120, and it more is in line with the EPA requirements and stuff, the OSHA requirements. We don't have a choice on that, but the ordinance is more for what we expect the citizens of Fayette County. If there's a spill, what happens, and how we respond, what we're responsible for. The OSHA stuff is an internal thing that the Division of Fire handles. Okay, thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Now I'll ask the question about there are only six locations. Can you give me a scope of a little bit more information as far as the entire scope? I'm sorry, could you repeat it? There's only six locations you have down here as far as the amount of locations not currently covered. What about the rest of the locations? I guess I'm moving ahead too quick. I'm looking at your slideshow. The six locations that are covered. Can you give me a reference on that? I'm sorry. I didn't hear the question, but she's talking about the next presentation. Oh, the next presentation. Next topic. Call me off guard on that one. We'll get there soon enough. Okay. Does any other committee member have any questions about the hazardous material ordinance? If anything comes up, feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to answer them for you. Madam Chairman, do we need to take any action on this? I think it's a tool that the fire department is telling us that they do need, correct? Yes. Like I said, this accurately portrays what we do on our day-to-day operations, and it's an up-to-date activity. I think we need to have this change, absolutely. Council Member Lawless. I'd like to make a motion that we pass this out of committee and send to the full council for a vote. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All in favor of moving the ordinance to the full council, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you very much. And next on our agenda is the public nuisance ordinance. I placed this into committee last week, so luckily we were able to go ahead and get this on the agenda. And Leah Boggs, who is the Council aide to Councilmember Kaye, is going to do a presentation. And along with her is Lieutenant Michelle Young. Thank you, Leah. Thank you, Commissioner Henson. As Commissioner Henson introduced me, I'm Leah Cooper Boggs. I'm the legislative aide to Councilmember Steve Kaye. Councilmember Kaye and Councilmember Henson, actually, Councilmember Henson was working on this issue long before Councilmember Kaye showed up on Council. but he also worked on this issue with her, and she asked me to do the PowerPoint for today. With me is Lieutenant Michelle Remark, who was in Special Investigations Unit when we started and is now in Eternal Affairs. So she's going to do part of this, and then the chief and the commissioner and the sector commanders are all here to answer questions when we get there. This is an amendment to the current ordinance, and I would say that is the biggest way that it differs from the chronic nuisance ordinance, which was proposed, I believe, last year, which almost rewrote entirely the nuisance ordinance. So this one is truly an amendment to our current ordinance that's on the books. Our current ordinance was enacted in 1998. It currently only applies to residential property. It applies to each unit of the property, not the property in its entirety. So to even apply, it's three occasions within one year. So that would be three occasions in apartment A, three occasions in apartment B, three occasions in apartment C. So it's unit by unit. It also only applies to gambling, prostitution, or drugs, crimes that count towards public nuisance. Only a penalty is issued if it is not abated. This is an ordinance that the police use to work with owners of the property that may not know crime is being committed on their property to bring them to the table to solve the problem. And the current ordinance doesn't provide any exception for situations where the owner is the victim of a crime or the occupant is the victim of the crime. and Council Member Henson, Council Member Kaye, and the police were very interested in... The police don't count that now, but they were very interested in codifying the fact that if you were the victim of the crime and you call and report, it would then not count against you. And we think the language in the amendment is going to be sufficient to also say, but if it's a drug deal gone bad and you're the first drug dealer to the phone, even if you're the owner of the property, then it would count against you. So the current procedure, I'm going to let the Lieutenant Remark talk about that. Good afternoon. The current procedure we use for the public nuisance is we look at our daily recap report, which is of the reported crime in Lexington. And from that, we look at the categories of arrest report, general, and narcotics. then we look at those particular cases and follow up in our database and find out whether it falls under what's regulated by our public nuisance. If it does, at that point we will send the owner that we get through the PVA website, we will send the owner a letter letting them know, because many of them may not know what occurred at their residence at that time, and it just serves as a notification to them. And then obviously if another issue occurs, normally we just send another letter. But once it gets to two to three times, then we will send it through certified mail. As of this date, the people that have worked it, we don't know of any penalties that we've ever imposed. We usually end up working with the owners to resolve the situation, get it abated, whatever we need to do to take care of the situation. We have recently had one appeal. It was actually on two different properties but by one owner. They weren't even classified as a public nuisance. they had just gotten the initial letter sent i have not heard of what the final outcome of that but that was a hearing in december what we found a lot of them get the letter if they have questions they call us we explain it to them and most landlords are grateful that we have let them know about it because otherwise they may not know because the residents obviously are probably not not going to let them know. One of the things that we really wanted to highlight was the locations that our current ordinance does not cover, and particularly how much police resource this takes on any given night that the police then can't call the owner and say, hey, if you would do this or change this or work with us here, it would cut down on the manpower that we're spending at your location. So District 1 has five locations, or has, actually we can't count, it has six locations, so all of those numbers are messed up. You know, number three is 455 calls for service, 35 arrests. Number one is 169 with 35 arrests. That's an incredible amount of time the police are spending at those properties. And I think this is not every location in every district. These are just some samples of what the police could easily, off the top of their heads, say in this district. We go here a lot. So the proposed changes, and they are highlighted in your packet, and they're in strikeout form, so you can see exactly the words that are changed, and that is on page 41. So the only changes to the ordinance is it applies to all property, not just residential. So in Section 1261, the word residential is just stricken, and then in Section 1263, the word residential is stricken. It adds to crimes that would be counted, not just drugs, prostitution, and gambling, but assaults, sexual offenses, weapons violations, and any felony. We thought it made sense those were serious crimes, that if they were routinely being committed on your premises, that that should be a public nuisance. And that is just in Section 1260, it adds assaults, sexual offenses, weapon violations, and any felony. It also now excludes any crimes in which the owner or occupant is the victim and had no control over the criminal act. So that is the last sentence in Section 1260. It does not change anything about the procedure for notifying the owners. It doesn't change anything about the penalty. It doesn't change anything about the appeal. It doesn't change anything about the abatement. So those are the only changes in the entire current ordinance that it makes. So, any questions? Council Member Lane. Could you go back to your last slide? The very bottom down there said, excludes crimes in which the owner occupies the victim of the crime and had no control over the criminal act. But that says it's the victim, but what if the owner was not a victim but had no control over the criminal act at the premises. Do you see my point? Well, those would be included. That doesn't say that. I mean, if the owner is a victim. Those are together as one issue. I'm sorry, if you mean example of a situation, you would be? Well, let's say that somebody owns a piece of property that lives there and somebody goes out in front of their property and it's a crime and it's on a frequent basis. Maybe it's on their property, but they don't have any control and they were not a victim of the crime. So would they? Yes, that would be covered under our current ordinance and this ordinance doesn't change. So this is only the revision, so the current, okay. And then the other question I had, with regard to the issue premises in our abatement letter, it says it's the sidewalk in front of the property is included in that. However, if people are working on the sidewalk, which is also a public area, are we going to include the sidewalk in this ordinance, or is it included or is it excluded? How does that go? You're talking about, say, a business or a resident? Yes, ma'am. In other words, under the abatement policy, if you put stuff out on the sidewalk and it's a nuisance, then we can make the people be responsible for that. But with regard to people or criminals or crimes being committed on the sidewalk, which is not really a part of the person's property, would the owner of that property be liable for something to happen on the sidewalk or in this alleyway next to their property or the street next to their property? I get what you're saying with police stuff. That's going to be where we look at the situation as a whole and kind of find out if it had anything to do with the residents inside, if they were somehow a part of it. But where police work is such a variety, it'll probably be done on more of a case-by-case basis. I know currently there's been some things with our ABC laws where the sidewalk is not part of the street and stuff is not part of their thing. So that would be a case-by-case basis. And, again, our whole point to this is we're going to work with the owners to take care of their problems. A one-time thing, the most they would get is just a letter notifying it, only if it occurred over and over and over again. And at that point, there's going to be some kind of link there, you know, that we can work with them on that. Our point is not to. We're trying to get rid of the problem for the public safety and the citizens' elections. Okay. This may be a little bit of a different question, but what if you were a charity or some kind of public agency getting contributions or maybe providing food or something for people, and they come and they congregate out in front of the property and they're creating a nuisance there, and maybe some of those people have criminal records or, you know, you follow what I'm saying? Does that get to be a gray area? As long as they're willing to work with us to try to abate, handle the problem as best we can, we can give them little tidbits of things to do. As long as they're working with us, that's our goal. We can't eliminate all of it, but as long as they make a good effort to work with us, that's not going to be our mission. Our mission is going to be trying to solve the problem. And do you feel that the way the ordinance is written, that the civil rights of any people that are involved in this will be protected also? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Now, excuse me now. I believe I'm on the right slideshow and the right question. I apologize. Could you answer, Leah? I don't know who could, you know, about the other remaining areas that aren't indicated in this slide show. I'm sorry. Could you? Yeah, you've got District 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8. What about the rest of the districts that are not, that you don't have indicated? How extensive is that, the rest of the calls in those other areas? We talked to the sector commanders and just got a sample of locations that came to the top of their head that we could work with. That doesn't mean that's all of them. These are just a sample of what's in Lexington. Right. I mean, but do you feel like this is a good indication, or do you think there's a lot more out there that we have to deal with? It's a pretty good indication. Will there be one or two more in each of the districts? Possibly. I don't think there's a large amount, but there may be a small amount. So this is where it's mostly centralized then? That's what I'm understanding. Okay, thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you. I think mine are about page 41 of the packet, which was up on the screen before. So the sum and total of the changes that you're asking for us legislatively would be on page 41, if I'm correct. Yes, sir. So the only changes would be under the Section 12-60 definition would be the addition of assault and sexual offenses, weapons, striking the or, adding and or felony, adding assault and sexual offenses, weapons, striking or again, and then adding, or any felony instances in which the owner or occupant is the victim of the crime and had no control over the criminal act shall not be considered in the number of occasions, including domestic violence calls for service. And in 1261, striking the word residential. And in 1263, adding the word the and striking the word residential. Yes, sir. That's the sum total of what you're asking us to do. Yes. Thank you very much. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. And I'd like to remind people that we hold property owners responsible for clearing their sidewalks and snow and maintaining those, even though they're not technically private property. So I have a couple questions. so this only relates to felony offenses? The assault, sexual offenses, prostitution, controlled substances, and I think weapons, there are possible misdemeanors in those. So like drug paraphernalia would be a misdemeanor? Yes, and that would currently be covered by the present ordinance. Okay. And if the owner or occupant of the property reports it, then what happens then? For instance, if someone's in my front yard assaulting somebody or whatever, and I call and report it, I would assume then that that wouldn't... It would not be counted. It would not be counted. So I think that's important to clarify for everybody and for the public, because we certainly don't want to dissuade people from reporting a crime. You think, oh no. So if these businesses or charitable locations and profit locations called and said, you know, these people are committing crimes on my premises and I can't make them stop, it would not be counted. Well, and I'm thinking also of a lot of the things that go on in my district. Oftentimes the occupant, especially now that we have Twitter and everything else, has a party for friends, and they tweet their friends, and they tweet their friends, and before they know it, there are 200 people there. And that's a real problem. But if the person who is renting the property calls and says, you know, I've got a gang of people here at my house and they're fighting in the street, et cetera, then they would be doing the responsible thing as a tenant. And so, you know, if you looked at over time, there were a lot of these, then you'd say, you know, you might need to quit having parties. But I've certainly seen some instances where it was a one-shot deal. I mean, last fall I went to these young people's house, and they were extremely, you know, that's what happened. They had a party and invited a few friends, and then before you knew it, it went viral. and so and then a week later they didn't realize you couldn't park cars in the front yard the police came again and one of the young men said i've never been in trouble for anything in my entire life and i've had the police called on me twice and you know some neighbors notified me and i said i'll go over there and i talked to them they were really you know so again i think we want to encourage the the tenants who maybe have one of these parties that gets out of hand to make those calls to the police themselves and also that the police, you know, go on and make an arrest when these things are going on. So thank you very much. And my only, I wish that some other nuisance activities such as noise and trash and code enforcement issues were included in this because we have oftentimes there's one house that the police goes to. Police are going to. Code enforcement's going to. Waste management's going to. And it's a combination of enormous resources for one or two properties. And so my only wish was it was broader. I don't want to do anything to hurt the landlords. I don't I want to do anything to hurt the tenants or the students. And basically I want our community protected and all people being protected. So that's the only thing. But I did want to bring up the self-report issue. And also, you know, the sexual assault. I mean, you know, when I read this where the owner or the victim has no control over the crime, my 30 years plus working with sexual assault. You know, I know how that's sometimes been. Anyway, thank you very much, Council Member Henson, Leah, Council Member Kay, and all the police and everybody else that have worked so hard on this. I appreciate your efforts and that of the police department. Thank you so much. Council Member Clark. Yes, I want to be sure I understand, and I really think I do, but I also want to say it again for the record, if I might. This ordinance, as it exists now, was passed in 1998. And so the only changes that we're making now are the ones that you've identified. Everything else is in the existing ordinance as it's written here. Is that correct? Yes, sir. All right, I just want to make that clear and perhaps for the record. Then I want to ask a question, and I'm not sure this has anything to do with anything, but on page 45 it says that Chapter 12 has to do with housing. And so I was just wondering where that title came from and if it's still correct in terms of the changes of the ordinance. I'm sorry, on page 45? Page 45. It says, Code of Ordinances, Chapter 12, Housing. That is where the public nuisance in the Code of Ordinances, that is the chapter in which the public nuisance ordinance currently resides. But this ordinance changes that, does it not? No, it still is in Chapter 12, Housing, Article 2, Public Nuisance. Okay. This extends it, though, to commercial properties as well? Yes. It does that. Okay. I understand that. I just thought the title might be confusing a bit. Well, and I will ask legal if that needs to be, because they sometimes tell me that the codifiers are the ones that title our chapters, but I will. Oh, there he is. I do. Even though Chapter 12 is titled housing, it applies to all structures in Fayette County. Okay. And one of the reasons public nuisances is in Chapter 12 is the appeal rights are the same as co-enforcement. You just heard from David Jarvis. And when they appeal, they appeal to the same hearing board that hears the co-enforcement appeals. I see. All right. Thank you both very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief, could you come up for a second? I know in looking at that slide actually that we have up there right now, we met the other day and you gave us information about some of the things in various districts. you feel like you need this in order to do the job that we expect you to do in terms of keeping our neighborhoods safe. Is that correct? I absolutely do. And I know that we've got at least one property in the 8th District that we've been to court on and everything else, I mean, to try to get something rectified and couldn't get that done. Do you think this will help us in that area? What we hope this will do is just provide some incentive and a carrot, so to speak, for folks who aren't willing to try to do something or do their part to alleviate a situation. And that's what this is all about. We want to be fair about it. We're going to be fair about it. As long as people are talking to us and making a reasonable effort, we're not there to see how many citations we can issue or take enforcement action. But we do need a tool that will allow us to meet with, and there will be incentive to meet with us, to talk about problems and solve problems that are using a lot of our resources. It's costing the taxpayers a lot of money, and this is just a more cost-effective way for us to find a resolution to deal with a problem. Okay. Well, since I've been on the council, I always ask you guys the question, how can I help you help us? And it sounds like this will do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. No one else has signed up to speak, and so I just wanted to comment that I really appreciate the efforts of Leah and the Chief and all the commanders and assistant chiefs. I appreciate your help with this because I personally think that there are areas that are in need of help. Many, many property owners are responsible property owners. The majority are. So I think this helps with those property owners that we may need to get another tool to get their attention. Not only is it costly as far as the service, the police offer, and going to the same property time and time and time again, and you saw some of them listed as examples, but it's also costly to our surrounding neighborhoods. It's costly to property values, which reduces city revenues as well. and, you know, in addition to meeting the police there every night or two or three times a day in some cases. But the examples you gave, Leah, were only commercial properties, correct? The ones not covered? Yes. Yes, that's what I thought. None of those were residential properties. They were more of a commercial business. Yes. Right. Okay. And Lieutenant Remark has said that a paraphernalia, they would not include it today. No, it would still not be. A paraphernalia would not be included without a possession. Now or then. I do have a couple other council members that have signed up to speak again, and then we have some public comments, some folks that want to speak. So, Council Member Lawless, are you good? And Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one quick question. I think we got this answer when we met, but are there any properties in Lexington that would be exempt from this ordinance? Not that we know of. Federal enclave, maybe. I'm sorry, say that again. If anything was designated as a federal envelope, that would probably be exempt. Would state property be exempt? We'd have to double-check on state property. What about housing authority property? It's already included. It's included? It's current ordinance. Okay. Thank you. I guess first I'd like to ask if any of the commanders or assistant chief, do we have an assistant chief here? No. But, yeah, the guys in blue, would you like to speak? No, ma'am. I think it's been pretty much it. Okay. Thank you. So at this time, we'll open it up for public comment. and first signed in is Stephen Marshall and then Craig Harden and Brenda Wells. Thank you, Council Member Henson. We've been dealing with this issue for a long time, you and I. If you would, Stephen, would you give us your address? Yes, Stephen Marshall, 2909 Summerfield Drive, Masterson Station. area. We've been dealing with this issue for a long time, and as I've said a number of times, I want to continue to applaud your efforts. I know of your intentions, appreciate what you're doing, and I do think that what we have on paper now is a much more reasonable, realistic provision to deal with the problems that we know exist. However, I think one of the things we learned last session or last year when we were trying to deal with the new ordinance was that I'm afraid that these problems are not very large in scope. I mean, we've been pointed out 12 locations throughout the city that are not covered by the current ordinance. Is it worth trying to add revisions to cover 12 ordinances, or excuse me, 12 locations? That's not a large problem. The problem, as Council Member Henson said, most property owners are responsible. if we're dealing with 12, the super majority, the overwhelming majority of property owners are responsible. Let's not open them up to increased potential liability because of a few no-goods. So that's my first general point. The second is we do want to help the police, but this is an enforcement problem. And this ordinance doesn't create any new funding. It does create a number of new administrative problems for the police because they're going to have to monitor and track all of this. They mentioned in the current procedure that no fines are imposed. Well, if we're going to increase enforcement because of these revisions, then they're going to need additional funding, additional manpower to track all of this. This is an enforcement issue. And what we can't do is to translate the enforcement obligation from the police to the property owner. Property owners are not enforcement specialists. We can't have them requiring them to go out and hire their own private security because of the city's funding problems. Third, the police have said over and over today, and I believe them, that they want to work with property owners. That's our greatest hope. We believe that. But we have to write the law for the unreasonable man. We have to write the law in a way that protects us in case the police or our officials are not reasonable, are not willing to work with us. The way the ordinance is currently drafted, the chief of police will have full discretion over the abatement procedures. The chief of police can say yes or no, reasonable or unreasonable. He has full discretion. That renders this ordinance subject to abuse. And we want to hope for the best and believe the best, but we have to write the law assuming the worst. My particular area of practice is landlord-tenant law. I do probably 2,000 evictions a year. I know all of the Fayette District Court judges very well. We discuss the law. as the current ordinance is written, and I'm not speaking of the revisions, but the current ordinance, it does not mesh with landlord-tenant law. And that creates a problem for my clients. That creates a problem for the Lexington Apartment Association. What we've got is a safe harbor provision in Section 12-67. I'm sorry, but your time is up. Yes. Okay. Okay. Craig? Okay, so you can have three more minutes. Three more, okay. The current safe harbor provision in Section 12-67 only exempts the property owner if they filed an eviction. The Landlord-Tenant Act, KRS 383-660, subsection 1, does not allow landlords to file evictions in all cases. If a tenant remedies any violation, the landlord cannot evict them. If the tenant's guest commits a violation on the property and the tenant goes on to ban that guest, landlord cannot file an eviction. So what we've got is a safe harbor provision that does not provide a safe harbor to landlords who are doing everything they can under landlord-tenant law. But they're still not protected and they could face penalties. That's a problem. So Section 12-60, as it's currently written, allows for nuisance activity to be determined by a criminal arrest or citation. If you've done any legal work, you know those are mere allegations. Arrests and citations are thrown out regularly in court because there's no evidence to support them. Police officers do a great job, but their allegations do not always withstand judicial scrutiny. What we need, if we're going to hold property owners responsible for something that occurred, we need some final adjudication that something in fact occurred, not was alleged to have occurred. But we need to have a conviction or some type of final adjudication by a neutral party that says it occurred, it happened, not just an allegation. And then finally, the ordinance triggers a violation to events in a 12-month period. If you look at the slides that were put in front of you, we have 12 properties that have massive numbers of calls. I'm not sure why we would set the triggering number at 2 when the problem is properties with massive amounts of calls. It seems like a better solution is you bump the number of occurrences that triggers the penalties up to something much higher than 2. I mean, if you look at the ones on our call sheet, we're looking at, you know, 40, 50, 60, hundreds. And so it doesn't make sense to have this very broad potential liability at two violations in a 12-month period. Last thing I'll say is that I know the council has been looking to study the homeless issue. Folks, this ordinance, if it's enforced the way it could be, is going to negatively impact affordable housing and low-income housing. I represent a number of affordable housing clients. It is an empirical fact that more nuisance activity occurs at those properties. These folks, if they pursue nuisance activity and evict offending tenants, they're losing money. They can't go after these folks for rent that remains on their lease because these folks are low income, affordable housing. They don't have anything to get. this ordinance, if it's prosecuted the way it could be, is going to create a huge disincentive for people to come to Lexington and develop low-income housing. So we appreciate the efforts. We're moving in the right direction. We appreciate the limited scope. But if we're going to actually expand the scope, I think we need to address the very real problems that exist in the current ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Craig, if you would give your name and address, please. Thank you. Craig Hardin, 228 Lexington Avenue. And I just wanted to take a moment to say, first of all, welcome to all the new council and committee members. Stephen and Brenda Wells is the executive director of the Lexington Apartment Association. and we're all here representing the Greater Lexington Apartment Association, and I wanted to make sure that this committee knows that we are committed. And at this opportunity, you know, we come up here and complain a lot, so I think I want to say thank you for our previous work last year and to Council Member Henson in particular for notifying us and working with us and also encourage that we have open door and are really anxious to work with the committee on particularly this ordinance and the others, some of the things that David Jarvis spoke about earlier. We just traded cards, and we're going to have him come and talk to us. I also want to make you aware that we have a very large growing student housing committee, which is new in the Apartment Association, where we are encouraging individual property owners to come and join and try to work on those issues. The University of Kentucky has been gracious enough to be meeting with us for some time there, and we're getting some things done, and it's growing rapidly. So we'll encourage those type of things whenever you have issues that you'd like to bounce off of us. We thank you for your efforts and work there. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak? Have any comments? Council Member Lawless. One point that I think maybe I don't want to muddy the water here, and I support this. and I appreciate those landlords that do work hard. And Mr. Harden, I know I've run into you on many a game night and game day in my district. And so, but one thing I'm wondering, and I want to clarify that it was stated that the properties they pointed out that were not covered currently was a sample, not all of them. So it's not changing it for 12 properties. It's a sample. Am I correct? That was the statement. This was just a sample of properties that were currently not covered, and it isn't. It does add some other criminal activity to all properties. What I'm wondering is if there is some way to amend this that certain types of properties, such as certain types of like a bar or whatever, that it could be moved up to four offenses instead of two and leave it after two at a residential or a smaller. And I don't know, but that seems reasonable to me depending on the severity of it. But I do support this, and I appreciate everybody's work, and I appreciate the Apartment Association investing time and trying to make it better for everybody. But I do support this. And if somebody wants to try to come up with an amendment to change the number of offenses, But, I mean, how many people do you have to have murdered in your parking lot before it's kind of a nuisance? So, you know, or a shop that sells illegal drugs and et cetera. So, you know, there's no easy answer, and I think that there are many, many, many, many affordable housing units available that are extremely well kept and never have a single incident. So to say it's poor people or it's people who are in affordable housing is a misnomer. I think that there are landlords that maybe rent to people for affordable housing that don't keep up their property and don't give a hoot about what happens to them or anybody else around them. So all that being said, I'll stop. I would move to make a motion, but I see Mr. Clark, Council Member Clark, has signed up to speak. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Marshall, Mr. Harden, I appreciate your comments, and I think you have some good points to make. However, the reason I spoke before, I just wanted to be clear that I don't believe that any of the things that you've suggested that you have problems with, which I do understand, have anything to do with the changes as they've been suggested. And so I just want to make that comment. It seems like to me that nothing that you have concerns about have to do with the idea of adding residential, or rather adding commercial to the ordinance or adding these charges of assault and sexual offenses and so forth, or exonerating the victim if that indeed is the case. So those are the major changes from what I see. And I don't see anything that the rest of the things that you've talked about are in the original ordinance that was the 1968 ordinance is from what I understand. And I just make that comment because that's the way it seems to me. Thank you, Madam Chair. Is there any other comments? Anyone else would wish to speak? Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I would like to make a motion to approve the changes in the public nuisance ordinance and move it on to the full council. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. So thank you. I appreciate the support on that. Next on our agenda is items referred to committee. Is there any discussion on the items? If not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Thank you. I'm sorry. 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