A bill for an ordinance amending the short-term rentals chapter of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to provide a definition for booking service providers, clarify duties of Excise and Licenses hearing officers, and authorize subpoena power for the Director of Excise and Licenses. Amends the short-term rentals chapter of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to provide a definition for booking service providers, clarify duties of Excise and Licenses hearing officers, and authorize subpoena power for the Director of Excise and Licenses. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-4-20.
May 12 EIS Council Resolution 1 to 3 four has been adopted. The next item up is Council Bill 1229. Council Member Hines, please go ahead with your questions on Bill 1229. Thank you, Madam President. Is there someone available from. Access and license, perhaps. I come from a councilman? Mm hmm. Well, here. Hi, everybody. So I. So I want to thank education license for the conversation we had before the committee meeting. Was it last week or the week before? Time flies. 2020 feels like it's a million years. But the conversation that we had about short term rentals and about the strike, the short term rental advisory committee, I won't go back over those comments. I also would encourage people to view the committee meeting that where we discussed this bill. I won't go back over that either. I just I do have just a couple of questions about our current short term rental ordinances due to our current short term rental ordinances. Provide any protections for our LGBT community. I believe that would be a legal question. We should. Elders Reggie. Bullock. I Council on Hines. Thank you for that question. So in our in our current short term rental ordinance, we don't have any any regulations that would deal with that there. Now, that's not to say that there might not be ordinance provisions that are elsewhere in our code that would provide protections for LGBT x rays, others suspect classes of suspect classes. So we could do some more research and provide you with a better answer for that. But that's not what this that wouldn't be in this and organization for looking at the things they. I missed a little bit of the last bit, but I think you were talking about protected classes, including religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, race or color, which are I think all the class is protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You. You're saying that our current short term rental ordinances is silent on any of the nationally protected classes? So I'm saying that in Chapter 33, the ordinances that that actually regulate short term rentals, we don't have any that's not in that ordinance provision in those ordinance provisions. That's not to say that we might not have ordinances, other ordinances, specifically with the city's discrimination ordinances, that would protect for those that would provide protections for those classes . We would have to do more research to determine whether or not those provisions are applicable to short term rentals. Okay. I wouldn't be able to provide a thorough answer on that question at this moment. Fair enough. I'm putting you on the spot. Appears Ms.. Stewart also has her henry's. So I don't know if you wanted to add add color for the mayor's office. Sure. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Sky Stuart. Mayor's office. Reggie is. Correct. Our city's anti-discrimination ordinance covers. All of those protected classes that you named. And short term rentals are considered a place of public accommodation in that ordinance, so they are covered by that ordinance. Short term rentals are considered a place of public accommodation. I want to make sure they're right. Yes. Correct. As the ordinance lays out various places of public accommodation where the anti-discrimination ordinance applies. Short term rentals are considered in the same way as hotels and other. Places like that. And we can have the city. Attorney who worked on the the updated draft last contact to you and walk you through that. That would be interesting. Yeah, I think that in addition to the, you know, the folks in all the protected classes in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, obviously did the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. That also provides particular guidelines for places of public accommodations. So I'd be curious to see how those rules apply to someone's home effectively. So, you know, as they're renting out there a portion of their home or something near you next to their home. So thank you for that. That's. That's all I have. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Councilman Sawyer. Thanks, Madam President. Hey, everyone. I know you guys. I emailed you this week, and we got a question into our office about some of the language around this in the way it was written just around the hearings. And I so I responded this weekend. And, and I am assuming that this is probably just a drafting thing from the city attorney's office, but wanted to run it by you since I had you in front of me real quickly. And if it's if you haven't had time to look into it, no worries. But since I've got you here, I thought I would just ask. So the question was essentially some of the wording around the hearings process, if there is a complaint, is a little bit seems a little bit strict. And so is that reflective of sort of standard language in the code or is that something that's specific to this language in particular? So I can I can take that question. Councilwoman Silver. So, yes, this is reflective of language and other instances that we have in the code. We specifically borrow this language from similar language that we have in the charter as it relates to the hiring of hearing officers for liquor license hearings. It's similar to language that we have in Chapter 24 of the code as it relates to the Department of Public Health and Environment's use of hearing officers for marijuana hearings. It's also very substantially similar to what the state uses for state level hearing officers. And it goes back to the fact that we want to reflect the really get back to the really relay, that these are quasi judicial hearings in nature and that we have to develop a record just in case anyone wants to appeal this this the determination that's made first by a hearing officer to the directors. The director can make a determination and have all the evidence before her and then make a determination. That is the final decision that can then be appealed to district court and then the district court can review, can have all the information, all the records available to them to make a determination as to whether or not that decision was lawful. So, yes, we've probably borrowed language from other provisions in the code. And then the other piece of that was the subpoena information. And we essentially updated that language. It's substantially the same. We just changed a few of the terms just because it's very legalese. And a lot of these provisions were written 50 years ago, so we thought we could be a little bit shorter. But those provisions are substantially the same as what we have for administrative citations that they give hearing officers. I mean, in this case, the director, the ability to issue subpoenas, to compel the presentation of documents or witnesses. And if they don't, if a person is unable to submit those documents or if they don't comply with the subpoena, that would be unlawful. And that's the same thing as as any administrative citation and subpoena that we issued for an administrative citation hearing. Awesome. I really appreciate it. I assumed and I said in my email response that I assumed that you it was just a drafting thing and that you were taking it from, you know, or reflecting other areas of the law or other areas of our code. But I just wanted to confirm that with you. So thank you so much for that explanation that was really thorough, and I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman Zoya and Reggie and Molly and Skye. The next item up is Council Bill 1216. Councilmember Cashman, will you please put Bill 1216 on the floor for publication?