Amends Article II of Chapter 33 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding short term rental properties and adds sections providing the Department of Excise and Licenses authority to license and regulate short term rentals (rentals under 30 days) in the City & County of Denver. Public Comment Period: a) Introduction of the legislation. b) 15 minutes of public comment. c) Discussion. (NEIGHBORHOODS AND PLANNING) Amends Article II of Chapter 33 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding short term rental properties and adds sections providing the Department of Excise and Licenses authority to license and regulate short term rentals (rentals under 30 days) in the City & County of Denver. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 4-13-16.
Thank you. Mr. President, I move to amend Council Bill 16 to 62 and the following particulars on page two, line 25. And this refers to the hard copy as opposed to the paginated copy on page two, line 25. After the word premises, insert the following. In addition, the applicant shall attest on the application whether or not the property upon which the licensed premises is proposed to be located is subject to any private restrictive covenants or other private contractual restrictions on the use of the property. And if so, whether the use of the property for short term rentals will comply with any such covenants or restrictions. The director shall deny any application upon which the applicant has self-reported that a short term rental would violate covenants or other restrictions applicable to the property. Nothing in this subsection shall be deemed to impose any duty on the director to independently verify any representations by the applicant in regard to restrictive covenants or other private contractual restrictions on the use of the property, or to interpret or to enforce any such covenant or restriction. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. It's been moved and seconded. Comments you want to add in, Councilman Flynn? Just briefly. Sure. Thank you, Mr. President. As many of my colleagues and other members of the public know, I've been working on some alternate approach along the lines of what I explained about council to 61 of my concerns there about how we are commercializing residential neighborhoods. And I would point out that, yes, the council did pass citywide cottage foods into as a zoning text amendment, but we also require a zoning permit with informational notice for that permit as well. So I think it's very important that we not initiate or be the cause of private party disputes in covenant communities. Most of the members of this body and I won't go into the particulars of it, but they remember that I had one such incident instance in my district that was particularly troublesome, that involved in a way and a short term rental. And that is that is thankfully has been resolved. But I want to make sure that we don't issue licenses to conduct an activity that by private contract the licensee has agreed not to do there. Just one brief story up in Councilman Espinosa's district. A friend of mine is in a townhouse association, seven units up in North Denver, and they found that one of the unit owners apparently had moved but was renting the unit short term. And and it took them quite a while. It was quite an ordeal, too, to put a stop to it. But in the midst of it, my friend, there was a bus stop across the street and and there was a house across the street that everybody thought was a drug house. There were a couple of drug dealers who lived there. And when she went out to wait for the bus one day, one of the drug dealers came out to her and said, Do you feel safe over there? We noticed there's a lot of coming and going and a lot of strange people going in and out of the out of your condo association. Do you feel safe? So I think when drug dealers start worrying about your safety, it's time that we take pause and examine where we're doing this and where are we allowed and what are the rules. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Council members knew. And Espinosa, you're in the Q. I just want to make sure you want to comment on the motion or did you have a comment on the larger bill? Larger bill. Okay. We'll come we'll come back to as amended then councilman another on the motion or to the larger bill. Larger bill. Okay. We'll we're walking down then, Councilwoman Sussman on the motion to amend. On the motion to amend, go read it. Okay. I'd like to ask a couple of folks to come up and address this particular amendment. Let me start with excise and license. Will it be sisolak? Sir, Nathan Batchelder would like to address how you are addressing the HRA information. Good evening, council president, members of Council Nathan Batchelder here with access licenses. I think we share the same concern with Councilman Flynn and the fact that we are actually providing a proactive approach to educating and notifying our short term rental applicants that they need to actually check with their HRA and and look through those rules of those covenants to make sure it's an operation that's all allowed. The way we're planning to do that is through our short term rental starter kit. Our starter kit will essentially be a separate web portal that gives the applicant a checklist of sorts that they will check through. And one of those checklists will actually direct the applicant to check with your HRA, make sure that your rules and your covenants allow this before you even start applying. So I think we also value and respect the covenants and the rules that are agreed to by archways. We actually have a much more proactive approach with our framework to make sure people are in compliance with their homeowners associations in the first place. Secondly, I think the department would have concerns any time that it's put in the situation of interpreting private contractual homeowners association language. So our current framework gives us both abilities. We'll be able to have that proactive approach of making sure that the applicant goes through our checklist and make sure that they check with their homeowner's association before they apply. And it also distances the city and the department from interpreting private contracts and HRA language of hundreds of highways in the city. But we absolutely do value and respect all the ways in the county that the city can offer. And we feel it's a partnership as well as a proactive educational campaign with all of our applicants. Thank you very much. Noted Miss Locks, did you also want to address this? Okay. The second question I have, is there concern that if we put ourselves in the place of making sure somebody is informed their H0? A I'm wondering what legal consequences that might have. Archways have lots of rules. They have rules sometimes about design, house design, sidewalks, fences, what you can build and what you can't. And in no other instance do. We asked people applying for those permits whether they have talked with their house or not. This would be the only time that this request would be made. I think that it may have implications for that are distinctions between the public sector and the private sector. I wonder if Mr. Broadwell would address that for us and what what sorts of things that this might mean. David Broadwell, assistant city attorney. Well, first of all, in answer to your question, I'll call your attention to the last sentence and the amendment. And that is an attempt on my part to recommend to the councilman that we we stay away from those kind of problems by disclaiming that the director of excise and License is placed in a position of having to interpret the covenant. And this is essentially a self-reporting thing by the applicant, but doesn't get us in the business of adjudicating whether or not the permit will violate the covenants or not. One of the things that that of most local government attorneys like myself kind of learned early on, Councilwoman, as you indicated , is that private restrictive covenants kind of exist in a parallel universe out there. And there's a tremendous amount of conflict that happens between highway boards and individual homeowners in terms of interpreting and enforcing covenants that don't involve the municipality at all. And as you indicated, there are innumerable ways where cities regulatory laws may grant a permit or grant a license. But anyone receiving a perimeter license has a completely independent duty to deal with a homeowner's association if they're in one, and the deal with whatever civil liabilities they might have. So in this case, this would be unique, as far as I know, in terms of any of our regulatory laws, where a formal part of the application process would be a check off by the applicant in regard to the fact that they've vetted their covenants, if any, and are willing to attest to whether or not what they're applying for complies. But we've attempted to mitigate any sense that the director is going to be judge, jury and executioner in terms of deciding whether the covenants actually do apply to short term rentals, that we're not placing ourself in that position. So simply, it's essentially a reporting requirement by the applicant themselves. The only way that this amendment would force the director to do anything is if they've actually affirmatively self-reported. I checked, and it does appear to violate the covenants in that case, if they have attested and actually dare to say that on the face of their application, then then she's directed by this language to deny the license. But it is admittedly an unusual thing. It's not something we've done in our other regulatory laws. And believe me, from the little bit I do know about a litigation over covenants, there's a lot of subjectivity that is involved in whether or not a particular use does or doesn't involve or does, doesn't it doesn't implicate the covenants. Just in the last couple of hours, I found a recent court of appeals decision in Colorado that in fact involved a question about whether or not short term rentals violated covenants in a community down by Telluride. And in that case, the homeowner one was sued by the homeowners association, but the court ultimately sided with the homeowner's ability to use the property for for short term rental in that case. But it turned on the very specific wording of the covenants that were in play in that case. So lo and behold, this is actually a live issue that is being litigated out there between private houses and the people who live in those communities. Thank you very much. This is that's probably my major concern about putting the HRA notification here. My first one is that we're doing some proactive stuff to make sure that the people who are applying for this kind of license will know what they need to do. And they need to check with their HRA and they need to check with their landlord. And we have that sort of education process that we're going to be doing between July and December. But secondly, if we. Start with this particular ordinance that you must inform your house. Whether or not we get involved. I think we raised the expectations of the community that the city will get involved in your litigation between you and your. And that opens up a great big morass that would worry me very much. So I encourage my fellow council persons not to pass this amendment. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Espinosa, you now say you do have a question about the motion. Yeah, just in Nathan's response, actually. Go ahead. So. Well, I agree that it would generally be a morass. So you won't see me supporting this for for a whole host of reasons. It does it does mean that that situation exists. And if if David's over here talking about the confusion and that's already in live, as he said, you know, to expect homeowners to know and to figure that out themselves what degree their A rules and covenants do or do not allow this. It's easier just to check that box and move on. And and that's obviously happening because there are two ways that do prevent this, that these do exist. And so tell me, if somebody goes through the process, checks the box, what is the and it is I don't know how we find out that there's something wrong. But then he gets into the that person gets into the situation where they have done this against their H-2A rules. What what is the what is the penalty phase for that? Right. So with that particular instance, with a short term rental unit that is not in compliance with their H-2A, their H-2A will be able to issue whatever penalties and fines within their own private covenants for that particular unit. But I can tell you, I think it's more of a partnership right now between excise and licenses and the rest of the city's owners. We've spoken to several property managers and H-2A representatives who can actually partner with us of enforcement of our ordinance. For example, if there are some eateries or property management companies that know of a situation where a unit is not their primary residence, they might not be meeting safety features or they might be violent. Any other conditions of the city ordinance? We can actually partner with those organizations and those folks to make sure our enforcement tools are working just as well. So we'll always have the capacity to where you have sort of a blacklist or something like that where you can then submit the addresses for their units that are then no longer applicable, meaning they're not allowed to get license, or. If it's a complaint of a short term rental that's violating any condition of the ordinance. So not now. They first have to do it illegally and get to the point where then there's repercussions. If there. That you can't proactively as in HUAC are addresses are off limits. If that's taken care of within the private covenants and the enforcement of the specific nature ways. Right. So there's that conversation and what actually happens within their own rules and in their own covenants and how they enforce those own covenants. But what we can do in addition is to partner with each of ways. If there is complaints about people operating a short term rental unit, that might not be a primary residence, that might not be displaying an ad online, or they might be violating the conditions of the but. If we're going to register all these licenses, why wouldn't we be able to also populate that registry with licenses mean addresses that are not licensable by voluntarily by organizations, that. There's nothing in our ordinance precludes such a contract language, if that makes sense. Okay. Now, so back to where I really was going. So then, okay, so they voluntarily do this. They get to that point where it is recognized through your processes that it was not the way cut them off and says you can do this. At what point does it become some sort of violation of excise and licensing rules and what is the repercussion to that? That may mean that STR operator. Correct. So if we took a complaint from in a way, we would investigate that complaint accordingly with our inspectors. So we would ask we would first make sure they're licensed. Right. And if they're licensed, we would make sure that they are the proof of premise. They have permission from the property owner. They've been displaying their license number on the advertisement and that they meet all the conditions of the license itself. Right. So we would be able to actually partner with those management companies to make sure they're following the city ordinance that was actually stipulated in our licensing ordinance. That's separate from whatever restrictions or covenants are placed on short term rentals within the actual H-2A. So thank you for that. And the reason why I had that line of questioning is that's pretty much the answer that I've been getting since we've been asking the question since January, which is that there are no clear penalties, there is a penalty process, but there are so many hurdles and other bits and pieces and parts to the where enforcement lies is sort of all over the place. And that is inherently one of my problems with this bill is that there needs to be a clear penalty. That is direct. When a violation is found, a fine is issued and the person is is no longer able to operate that if they're not operating consistent with the rules of licensure. Correct. And we have lots of tools within. But it's a very, very evolved process. And the fact that you can directly say this is what happens when this when this fails has been an issue for me. Yeah. So I might actually defer to our senior attorney who can go into a little more details about what that licensure fee and penalty might be, including potential perjury. But the process to get to perjury is not direct. Thank you, Kelly Moore, on behalf of the city attorney's office. So I understand your concern. If I'm going 75 and a 55, I get a ticket. If I'm if I'm wrongly checking a box on my license or application, what happens? So there's always the discretion of an officer when you're speeding to get that ticket to say whether or not you actually get them. So while I understand that from your perspective, it's very cut and dry with speeding, there's actually a wide range of possible penalties in that realm, too. When we look over here, it's similar. If you are checking the box that says that you are complying with your terms and the you get caught lying, you could be subject to those penalties and then there could be charges filed against you as a crime. The Department of Excise and Licensing could also file to show cause against your license for that violation of itself. And we go through a due process hearing that way, which would then have your license potentially be revoked and you wouldn't be able to do the short term rental anymore. So. While it's not clear cut, I don't think there's anything when you violate the law that is a clear cut penalty that you're looking for to say if you do this, then that because we do have due process rights that attach to the issue a license to an individual. Which is why I can dodge on photo radar ticket if I want. Right. Because that doesn't ask me whether I violated the speed or not. So that sounds like a lot of city expenditure to go through that process just to get somebody to I mean, just to to really say that that you shouldn't have been operating. Is the licensee culpable for the charge? I mean, the charges that are incurred by the city throughout that process? I mean, that's something we could work into our our processes and our rulemaking. And I don't think that necessarily has to be set out now. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. Enhancements as we got a little broader, broader to 62 in general. I hope that we can focus colleagues just on this motion right now because there's another motion and then there's Bill as amended. So there will be plenty of time to comment on this. So if we could have you just ask if you could just focus specifically on Councilman Flynn's motion. Councilman Ortega, you're up. So I appreciate this line of questioning that we've been going through. I was at a meeting with an HLA group in Lower Downtown and they're actually having to research the various sites that advertise because they know they have some people in their building that are. Basically renting out their unit as short term rentals and they have no other way of being able to find out who it is other than to have to play cat and mouse and try to track down who it is that that's renting their unit, which is in direct violation of their own. And so I think the concern is that this puts a lot of onus and responsibility on the boys to try to find out how. You know, who's who's doing this within their development and then what that recourse is and hearing the line of explanations of how that gets resolved. It's it's lengthy and it's expensive. And so it's putting the burden on the airways to try to solve the issue when there is someone who is knowingly violating the rules. And, you know, a lot of this hopefully will be resolved in the education process. But there may be some people choosing to ignore the process. And even if someone doesn't have a license and they are doing this, can I've been asked the city attorney this question. Do they still go through the. The normal process to prove that they should not be allowed to operate even though they don't have a license. So that the onus would be on the licensee, that they would have to prove that they are allowed to operate. And if they aren't allowed to operate, then they could be subject under our general ordinance guidelines that if anything is unlawful, you could be subject to up to a $999 fine and up to a year in jail . So it would go through the court procedure that way, if that answers your question. Yeah, it does. So thank you. I have no further questions. Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilman Flynn, I'm going to hop over you. We got some couple other people who rang in, hopefully to talk about the motion. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm just trying to determine if there is a net benefit to this amendment. So I guess I have a question for you, Nathan. Does this amendment change the enforcement of this proposed law? No. There is no language in the ordinance right now that discusses private contractual language. And really what we plan to do, I think, is similar to what the sponsor of the amendment is to have that approach, that framework where we tell an applicant to check with their actuaries, to check with their covenants to make sure this isn't allowed use. Okay. Thank you. And then, Councilman Flynn, I have a question for you. So it sounds like it does achieve the same thing. That will be part of their rules. And I wonder if it's confusing if with their long list of rules that this is the one that is in the law and the other ones aren't, and then it might set up false expectations. Mm hmm. Okay. I, I can say that I'm not confused by it, and I'm only confused by why why other members might consider not supporting this because it simply puts into the ordinance what the exercise of the license already is, has said it's going to do. It just requires them to do what they've already agreed to do. And the reason I want it in the ordinance is to maintain that requirement through the years. The only thing that it adds is it asks that that directs the director to deny the license of the self-reporting. Applicant says, I'm not permitted to do this by private contract. That's the only difference. And there are 850, give or take, homeowner associations registered in the city and county of Denver. This amendment in no way requires the division of the exercise of a license to look at any of the covenants, to examine them, to study any of them. It simply puts into the ordinance the requirement that they do what they've already said they're going to do by rule. I would rather see that as a requirement to ensure that it gets done down years down the road. Katherine Black. Any other questions? No, thank. You. All right, Councilman, do you now have a question about the motion? Go ahead. Thank you, sir. Ask the city attorney one question. There are some are questioning the councilman. Last question. Does this amendment give you the greater ability for enforcement? Enforcement is a big, big issue. And I just wonder, does this help strengthen the enforcement process by having this in the ordinance? I don't know that it would. It's a self at at attestation. So by merely checking the box, if someone does lie on that application, we have to go through the show cause procedure to then revoke their license. And then I think we would be getting into the very thing that Councilwoman Susman is afraid of, is that then we would be interpreting private contracts. So if they don't. Abide by you have to go through that process anyway. We do, yeah. And so by them checking the box is proof that they that is evidence that they are not comply. Well checking the box would give us evidence that they lied on their application fee. So if the license was then granted, we'd have to go through the due process claim. Typically, people who apply for licenses and they are denied also get a denial hearing to object to the denial of a license to. So we'd have to go through that process. Seemed like it would help you a little bit. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman there, Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. And my apologies to my colleagues for being late due to a family emergency. But I do appreciate that Councilman Flynn gave us some advance notice about this amendment. I did not get a chance to talk with the city attorney about my question in advance, but it was raised by other council members. So I just want to play out a scenario. I actually don't have a philosophical issue. I know some of my colleagues do. They don't like putting things in ordinance that could be in regulation or that could be input in other places. I'm a believer that sometimes it's comforting to have things in an ordinance if you're going to do them anyway. So I don't have a philosophical problem with that kind of ordinance drafting. I am worried, though, about unintended consequences. So I want to think through a scenario where a sincere owner has a difference of opinion with their HRA about what their articles do or don't say. And the scenario I'm concerned about is an owner attests that, you know, they read the language they think it allows subletting, for example, let's say that it says subletting and they think that that means that they can do a short term rental. And the House says no, subletting is different than a short term rental. And and then the department is indeed notified by this. And now we have a situation where the department is in a decision making mode about actually pursuing perjury charges against someone who who knowingly , you know, checked the box. So that's the scenario of an unintended consequence. So I don't know if either Mr. Bardwell, who helped to draft this or, you know, the city attorney who's advising the department, want to comment on if indeed given notice by an HRA that a unit is potentially in noncompliance, whether that obligates you to begin a hearing against someone, even if there's a difference of opinion. The intent of the draft is absolutely not to obligate us to conduct a hearing and to send them to district court if they want to argue about the meaning of their covenants in a case, as you described. So that's what's intended again. The last verbiage we included in the drafting in Councilman Flynn, including that in the drafting, was intended to make that point that we're not going to be the forum in which those kind of differences get adjudicated. But that that's the intent, Councilwoman. And because because it's based on the concern you just expressed, it does get the city into an unusual place. When, when, when, when, when assertions about compliance with covenants are not becomes a little bit our responsibility because we're building it into our regulatory codes in terms of making it part of the application process. And another aspect of this, just to reiterate, is that the one definitive thing the draft the amendment requires the director to do is if they've been so bold as to say, yeah, there's covenants and I think I'm in violation of them, that only in the most clear cut case where they've self affirm something that definitive does is say to the director to do anything, and that is to deny under that narrow circumstance, but not when there's some debate or some difference. And I realize that scenarios are dangerous, but I just want to play this out so it doesn't obligate the department to take action, but does it allow the department to take action? So, for example, let's say renewal is coming up and one of the provisions elsewhere in the ordinance states that license renewal does have a review of if you have violated any of these, you know, provisions and you start to have neighbors who are petitioning to say this should not be renewed. So I just want to ask, does the language allow the department to take action against the individual? Well, I'll defer to Biz Morey if she wants to comment on this one as well. But I would say, no, this doesn't affirmatively allow or require or anything else a director to get involved in those kinds of disputes. It doesn't create a basis for denial based upon an external allegation that the covenants are being violated. That's that's intentionally left out of the language for, you know, for a lot of the reasons you're articulating in terms of not just not wanting to go there. So so I think the answer to your question is no. And I don't know if Ms.. Morey wanted to comment on that one. And I would agree with Mr. Broadwell. I don't think it obligates the director to say no or say yes or not. Get involved. No, no, no, no. But remember, my question in this round wasn't about whether you're obligated, it's whether you may. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I believe that the amendment's written in broad enough that the director may get involved. Okay. That that right there is my concern. So I'm going to move to comments really quickly. But I just wanted to clarify procedurally, when we have our public hearing on the zoning amendment, was there a courtesy public hearing on the regulatory bill coming run first reading tonight? Right. If if both passed, Councilman Susman will like to 62 to move at the same pace as to 61 so they'll both be on the. So I guess. I am concerned about unintended consequences. I think I'm fine with the idea that you want to require people to pause and look at their HRA. I'm concerned about an unintended consequence because it happens now where neighbors come, they say, we want you to take action on this renewal. We think they lied on their application and there's political pressure and there's community pressure and the department has the authority to take that up. That to me is confusing. So for tonight, I'm going to vote no in the amendment. But I would invite folks to give, I guess, public testimony on this point. I'd love to hear some input during the hearing. Perhaps it may or may not be on point with the zoning hearing, but to me we have a second reading. But but I'm philosophically supportive of the idea of saying to folks, stop, pause, look at your HRA. I do not want a situation where neighbors feel like they have language in the ordinance to petition the department to somehow be engaged. I just given that people really do have sincere disagreements with their ways on interpretation all the time, and it'll take time for each of us to revise their bylaws to get clearer on this point. I'm just I'm a little nervous that we're ahead of that and we're going to create some unintended consequence. So no, for tonight. But I'm open to understanding, you know, people's perspective on it and thinking about it more. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. Each. All right. The only person that hasn't come in yet in the queue. Councilman. Clerk. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I think that I share some of the concerns about getting involved in these private agreements, and I would not support this if I felt like that did this. I also I have some trepidation, although I agree philosophically with where Councilman Espinosa was going. And I had the same thoughts on, well, if we know the statute doesn't allow it, why can't we preemptively put those addresses in there? But bylaws can change with a simple vote at one board meeting one month. And I don't think we get involved in this. I think that this amendment, however, is very simple. It is written and was crafted very well, and it says the director shall deny any appli or application upon which the applicant has self-reported and then goes further on to say Nothing in this subsection shall be deemed to impose any duty on the director to independently verify. I believe that the way this is written. I am not convinced that this gives us a whole lot more than what's already in there. Their him. But it is one level above I'm checking off. Oh, did I go through my check sheet? Now I'm saying to the city I did these things. So it's one step higher. It's not a big step. So I'm not convinced that it's completely necessary, but I have absolutely no problem supporting this. I think that it's crafted in a way that I don't think that it will lead to unintended consequences. I don't think will put us in a sticky spot, which I would not support it if I felt at all that it would. On And while I have very few active activities in my district, if this provides a level of comfort to the constituents that my colleagues like Councilman Flynn are representing on ways and I'm very happy to support it. I think in in some ways and this will be very interesting as we get into public hearings on the bigger issue that we are making a mountain out of a molehill on this one. I think that it's simple, it's straightforward. It gets us a little tiny step further than what we have in the language, and I'm happy to support it. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clark. All right, round two. Talking on the motion. Councilman Flynn, you back up. Thank you, Mr. President. The. There are many unintended consequences to every action that we take. Every single bill will have unintended consequences. The one that this amendment is is aimed at addressing is the unintended consequence of the city suddenly issuing licenses that could impact up to 850 homeowner associations. And the unintended consequence that we are causing civil disputes among these parties through our actions when requiring the applicant simply to go and check and verify that they can do this, is all that this amendment does. My hope is that we can prevent. 100, 200, 800 problems between private parties out there through the unintended consequence that is more likely to happen than the director being politically pressured into holding a show cause hearing that the that the audience doesn't require her to do in the first place. The Telluride case that that Mr. Broadwell spoke to he briefed me on that very he briefed me very briefly before the meeting. And although I'm not a trained lawyer, I've watched enough Matlock to be able to understand. But the Telluride case hinged on the covenants in that case. And Mr. Broadwell, jump in and correct me if I'm wrong, where the covenants were very vague and did not say you can't do short term rentals less than 30 days or what have you. It was a more broadly written part of the covenants that they had sued over. And in this regard, this would require the applicant to look at the covenants and not look for the provision in Telluride, which was only residential uses can be performed. No commercial uses can be conducted in the in the premises of this particular association. So I the unintended consequence I'm trying to avoid is for the city to ignite all these dozens, hundreds or whatever they might be of problems that don't need to happen with this one simple little checkbox that the division already has said they intend to do through their education campaign. The. And the final thing was on. Oh, that this is a unique action we're taking. It's been a while since Councilwoman Sussman had asked this question. This is sort of unique in that we don't have any provisions in our zoning office when a homeowner comes in and wants to put up a fence. We don't check whether their H-2A allows them to have a fence. I agree with that. But in this case, we are looking at taking a long standing. We've had long standing rules on fences. After all, your fence can't be more than four feet high if it's front forward of the front line of the house, for example. So if we suddenly changed our ordinance and said, you can have a six foot fence in your front yard, I think we need to understand what the implications of that are here. We are taking an activity that has been illegal since at least the 56 zoning code and probably the one that that replaced back in 1956. And we are saying suddenly tomorrow you can do this anywhere in a city. And so we're we're lowering the bar on commercialization in our neighborhoods. And because of that unique circumstance and because this is a change in use, this isn't a fence or it's not a purple. You know, we're not painting a house purple in violation of covenants. This is this is an introduction of a commercial use into residential neighborhoods. So I think it's highly appropriate that we afford highways, this little bit of cushion so that they don't they don't they don't face as many problems with licenses that we issued, licenses that we issue down the road. I think that was all that I have. Oh, and just to Councilwoman Black, the net benefit I believe the net benefit from this amendment is that we reduce the number of potential conflicts between private parties. I know the highway in my neighborhood that had to address the one situation that you're all familiar with, had to go through a lot of pain and expense to take care of that situation. I want to try to avoid that. I think this will prevent some of them. Not all of them. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn and Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you all for all your comments. I just as you can hear from the comments, my concern is that we're putting it in here. With the language that but we're not going to do anything about it. And it seems like it's for show because we already have these restrictions that we are going to impose in our rulemaking . And so why would we put in the expectation and expectation for an applicant or the HRA that we will enforce your rule that that for you, that we will help you in your and in your concern over an STR. We already intend to be proactive about this. But the other thing that concerns me is that we are that the community members out there who I have talked with for two years are just hearing about this tonight. And the whole ordinance wasn't done in a vacuum. It was done with the I and C neighbors who worried about this and looked on this worked. We worked with the stakeholder community. We worked with the neighborhoods, not just ANC, but individual neighborhoods. And here they are hearing about it for the first time. It is this is something that I think should have been taken to a committee. We've been talking about it since for two years. But we have new council people. We've been talking about it since July. This is. For months. This is me. And that's quite a long time to have maybe brought this before. So we could have vetted it with the community to see what they think about that. But now it's just coming tonight. And I, I think it might be wise for us to we we have in place we're going to have an advisory group with all the stakeholders afterwards to take a look to see if we've done it right. Have we missed some points? And that stakeholder group is going to be the same sort of folks that we talked to for the last two years. I don't know why we need to start changing the regulations at the last at the 11th hour. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Espinosa. You know, I just in my little familiarity with these attestation forms. You basically are sitting there affirming the following statement. So I'm trying to figure out if this is doing nothing or if it's really doing nothing. And what I mean by that is, is if. If there is a if there's a situation where it's in dispute, the license has been issued. We're not talking about revoking the license. We're not going to change the status at all whether this statement is in there or not. And that person wrongly checked the box that said, tell me about the form. Does your will you ever get to this situation where you're not checking the box and getting license? Because don't you have to check the box and attest that you've already verified this with your covenants and it's a it's acceptable in order to get to the point where your licenses have been issued. Or can you actually will you be issuing licenses without this box checked? Some of this will sort of depend on the technology that we implement. But I think the thought is for now actually honored different steps of the application. You will actually not be able to move forward if you don't check the box, if you don't certified. It's like trying to use my app without agreeing to the licensing terms. So. So for example, if one of the questions will ask you for a proof of premise or permission for a property, or if you, if you do not check that box, you will not be able to allow them to move forward in the application itself. I don't know if that answers. Yeah, it does suit me because that's what I'm saying, that we're writing in here a rule to say that, you know, the director won't issue that license if that boxes in checked. Well, you can't even get to that point on the on the system if that box is in check. So I mean, the system itself is the de facto rule. So it's just a strange it's a strange rule. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Any other comments on the motion to amend? You. I will simply add this this this reminds me, I remember when we were going through the budget cycle last time and we had $1.5 million allotted to the Department of Safety and the Department of Safety told us they were going to use that money for additional police officers. Yeah, this council had a debate to make them put that. And had we done that, we only would have had 45 officers hired this year. We had a robust discussion and we realized we needed more and we had 85. So I don't think it's wise to put this in those rules if we already know that the excise analysis is moving forward. So let's vote on the motion to amend. Madam Secretary, roll call. FLYNN Hi. GILMORE No. Can each. No. Lopez I knew. Ortega I. Susman No. Black No. Brooks. No. Clark? Espinosa. No. Mr. President. No. Madam Secretary, please close. Very nice results. Five, six, seven, eight. Five, eight, seven days. The motion to amend has been denied. All right, we've got our next motion. Councilman Espinosa, would you like to do with this bill? I would like to amend my script. Sorry. I would like to move that. This the. Well, actually, no, Mr. President, I would like to move to amend Council Bill 16 0262 as follows on page two, line 30, after the word, a new insert the following. Upon granting a license to an applicant who does not own the property where the licensed premises is located, the director shall deliver written notification to the owner of the property, advising the owner that a license has been issued. Thank you. It has been moved. Colleagues, we need a second. It has been moved and seconded. Comments. Councilman Espinosa. So this is hopefully more straightforward but maybe is unnecessary, as is the prior. But I just. There is another attached attestation attestation on that form that basically says that yeah. Even though I don't own the property and renting the property, my owner is cool with me owning this mean renting out this thing short term and that's pretty much the extent of that. And also I want is this is the director they're going to have the license mean they're the owner information because that's also part of it too simply after that license has been issued to that individual who's already attested to all those things, is it being okay? Is this and notification to the actual property owner saying, hey, this property has been issued a license for short term renting? It's it's it seems pretty straightforward to me, an easy ask and a good safeguard to property owners citywide. So that's the purpose of this bill in this amendment. Sorry. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. My first question is in the script, it says it's an amendment to Council Bill 261. Is that a typo? It is a typo was 262. It is 262. Thank you very much. I have I have similar problems with this particular requirement, and not the least of which is the amount of work and cost to discover the landlords of every single property, that of every single person who applies and would like to ask to excise and license. What would this mean to excise and license to have to be able to discover and find and notify a landlord. Yeah. So I think the department said Councilman Espinosa's concern of making sure that an applicant has permission from their landlord to offer to short term rental. We've actually already included that provision within the ordinance language itself. So under the application section subsection G, it says that the applicant must provide written documentation from the property owner, allowing short term rentals on the licensed premises. And what that means is that gives the department authority to audit and do spot checks of the licenses at any time. So through complaints or through simple auditing or spot checks, we can ask for that written permission at any time we want during our licensing enforcement procedures. In addition, I think there would be some concern about sort of the administrative burden of what that would mean to the department in terms of notifying property owners. Is the property owner a property management company? Where is that property management company located? Is the property owner under an LLC that's under different people and some people may not. So it's there are some concerns that we would have about tracking the property owners that are associated with the licenses. I think the tools that we have in place now are sufficient for us to request that written permission from the licensee at any time. And it really puts the onus on the licensee to obtain that permission from their property owner and show it to the department any time it requested. Oh, thank you. Would it have the same effect? We wouldn't be enforcing the landlord tenant relationship. Maybe this is a question for the attorney. Would it have the same effect as the H-2A proposal? Was that it? We wouldn't be enforcing a landlord tenant relationship either. I think there would be some of the same concerns. There's also concern that this would happen after we've granted that license. So, again, that property right in the license attaches to the licensee and we would have to go through due process to revoke a license if we found out that they didn't have permission. So again, we're kind of getting involved with private contractual matters. Okay. Thank you. Nathan was another question. Would this be a more complex process? One of the big things we're trying to do is make compliance 100% with this, make it more complicated for the applicant that we might discourage people from becoming regulated. Well, I think the the best practices that we've seen around the nation point us toward having a licensing system that is not overly onerous, that can have a high rate of compliance. The way we're trying to achieve that is through an online licensing structure that would allow people to simply apply online instead of having to come in person. I think there would be concerns that that compliance rate might sink as soon as we're having to review contracts or leases in person. So a streamlined regulatory framework that we have now with an online system. Our hope is to achieve that high rate of compliance and through auditing and spot checks and other enforcement tools. We can request that information whenever we'd like. Thank you. And I, I attribute a rise in consciousness about these. I know many people who have done staffers felt like they didn't know that it was illegal, but actually got an input from one of my constituents who said, not after two years. People should be quite aware that this is an illegal operation and they should be. And we've had some wonderful press and information in the papers and things that landlords should know that this thing is possible. And of course we will have the education process for landlords and houses and others once it's if if in fact it passes . And so, again, I'm not sure that it is a necessary process. It might discourage people from applying if they have to have extra steps to come down there and the landlords. One of the biggest things about the rules that we're having is that a successful applicant must list his license number in every advertising. This is a good tool for landlords and homes because they can go on every kind of site. We don't even have to decide whether it's Airbnb or VRBO, VR, Bio or Craigslist or, you know, mom's mom's list. You can see the advertising, and if the license isn't there, then you have a way to enforce it, not just by the city, but by landlords and by who is. Thank you, Councilman Sussman. Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr. President. And a question for Councilwoman Espinosa, because I'm a little confused. I thought I heard you vote no on my amendment for the very reason that Councilwoman Sussman and I and others are speaking against your amendment now. Would what would happen if a landlord who, upon getting your notice, says, wait a minute, I didn't give permission and contacts? The station says, you know, you got to do something about this. I did not give permission. And so how is this different? And and how would that work, in your view? Actually, I'm glad you asked me that question, because right here is my next question to Nathan was to explain, does the owner have a trump card so that if an owner has a renter that is doing this, do they have the right to say, look, I own the property and I want to cease this or now we're kicking it back over into the civil side and saying, nope, you got to deal with that with your renter. If a if a licensee cannot demonstrate that they have proof or permission from their property owner, then we will take action on the license. But is the owner being there saying, I want this to cease enough. So our inspectors can actually work with those owners and have the conversations with the property owners? Absolutely. So if we get a complaint from a property owner, then we can investigate accordingly. And depending on that case, depending on that investigation, if our inspectors feel that the licensee actually did not have permission from the property owner, we will take action on the license. Okay. It's not as once again, not as straightforward as I would hope. It's a process. Whereas I think as a person who rightfully owns the property, all parties, however many there are, should be able to go down there and say, pull the you know, cancel this license. At least there's a process for it. Okay. That partially answers that. I'm having trouble seeing the difference between your amendment and mine and in terms of how it operates in the end and works. So I'm struggling with that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn coming from knows I'm going to have over you to get to some people have chimed in yet councilman Lopez comments on the comments or questions on your on the motion on the floor. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President, I. Somewhere. I think I became a little confused here. Is it either you, Nathan? It's probably for you. Isn't it already illegal? For if it's I mean, I know we've been talking and know this is going into the substance of what the hearing will be about and the whole conversation of primary residents versus non. If we're asking in the bill if the whole fine I mean, we're not fine. But we've been having a lengthy conversation, hearing from people about the issue of owner occupied residences. Wouldn't it make that illegal? If you could only do it in owner occupied residences, wouldn't you as a renter be operating illegally? So a long term tenant under the current framework, a long term tenant could still operate a short term rental as a primary residence. Okay. That's where I'm a little confused. All right. All right. Oh, that. Okay. That changes some things for me. Thank you. I wanted to make sure I was clear with that. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Lopez. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll start by saying I do think that this one is messier than the one we just had. And my biggest concern is with the cost of finding the owner mailing something to them. But I just I had to chime in because to argue that this makes it harder and discourages people to do something , the requirement that's in there is for them to work with their landlord, get something in writing, showing permission and produce that. This this language is only one sentence long. Upon granting a license to an applicant who does not own the property, whereas the licensed premises located the director shall deliver written notice to the owner advising the owner that license has been issued. Nowhere in there does it say that the applicant has to do anything. If you really if you're going to make the argument that ease and compliance, you should strike the other part and put this one in. So I think that everybody is positioning themselves for what they want and don't want in here. But let's be a little less disingenuous about what we argue on both sides of the table here. I do think there are legitimate concerns outside of that, but I do not think there's any valid argument to say that this makes it harder and will lead to less compliance because there's zero in this that the applicant is required to do. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilman knew I was reading. Gee, again, you know, says that, you know, that you're going to receive written documentation for the property owner. So go to for them to do it right. Are you are you going to at least are you going to check need that that that is the right property owner. Yeah. So through our inspection services, we can use the many tools that are available to the city to make sure that it is the identifiable property owner and make sure that we able to reach out to that property owner and and have those discussions if they have that, that authorization or not. And we can do this, the auditing and the spot checks of the licenses, whether it be complaint based, whether it be spot checks at any time in that license, you will have to provide that that written documentation to the department of that permission and the written permission from the. And so this is the property the listed property owner differs from what the documentation says and that license will not be processed until that's clarified. Right. It would be sort of a case by case instance on an investigation of that particular issue. The way we have it set up now is that you will apply online for your license. You'll certify that you have permission from your property owner to do this. Once you go through the online steps and certification process, you'll then be issued a license number that then start advertising on your listings. Then it will be up to the department to go through those listings and check for compliance and do those spot check audits. Are you going. To check for the property owner before or after you issue the license? So in the online license application, we won't be able to have a document like a lease or a separate document uploaded into that system. It will be entirely audit based. Okay. Well, I just have concerns about enforcement making sure that they see the sales very good what you're doing. But if you don't check to see if that's the correct property owner, I just wonder if that's really that sound or a private practice. You and I think, you know, once this this license rolls out, we'll be making fine tunes and adjustments to our enforcement. A lot of that is actually through our short term role advisory committee that can include department heads, hosts, non hosts, different agencies to really see how we're doing, to really make sure that our enforcement mechanisms get honed and sharpened over time. So we really feel that having a community based dialog through our advisory committee on our enforcement efforts is actually really important to the actual licensing scheme itself. I should encourage you to keep it as tight as possible. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. You all right? Round two comments. Councilman Espinosa. So I agree with you, Councilman Clark. It is actually really simple and probably would be cleaner my way rather than the way it is actually the. Because the fact of the matter is, is there is no extra step for the applicant. It's actually very easy. The assessor's office is right below you guys and there's excise and licensing and CPD. You'll have the address of the license location. You go to that record which we all have access to on the computer and you get the owner's information and then you put whatever the cost is, $0.42 or so used to those forever stamps. You stamp that on an envelope with the notification saying your license, your property has been issued a license for a short term rental to the following individual. It couldn't get any better than that, and that's a degree of assurance that I think we should offer. Those people that own properties where the long term renter is short term renting. And just so we don't think that this is a huge grave thing. We have approximately 2000 stores in this city and only a fraction, a very small fraction of those are being short term rented by long term renters. So we're not talking about all 2000. We're just talking about that small fraction that are acknowledging that they do not own the property that they that they call their primary residence, but they are short term renting. And so but I do have a question for the anybody here. Do we what is what is the percentage of those 2000 that are renters re renting their property versus non primary resident operators. You know, I currently don't have that information right now, but once we start licensing, once we actually start giving us the ability to collect data on our licenses and the number of licenses we've issued, we'll be able to work off some figures and some numbers for you. And as I mentioned earlier, our advisory committee can actually study that those numbers and study that data to see what the issues may be, to see what our rate of compliance is, to see how well our administration enforcement of our license has gone. So it's probably some numbers we don't have today, but with the licensing structure, we'll be able to have those numbers. So if I just said roughly 10% and I'm pulling numbers that are not fair, but 10% of the number of the 2000 are re renters. You know, long term renters doing short term rentals. That would be 200 of these properties. I can tell you that I've probably got well over 200 letters basically asking me to to get rid of the primary residency requirement. So if we're looking for 100% compliance or as close to it, we should we should this this rule, should it mean these laws should actually be capturing the industry? Not not. What my concern is, is that, yes, we got I.N.S. Compliance and we got a lot of compliance with the notion that I presented to Councilwoman Sussman when she went to the agency at Denver Water while I was on the campaign trail in 2014 that this should be for primary residences only. And so. So the. The the. My frustration is we're we're moving forward on this bill with that clause. And we're not thinking about all the other periphery things that actually could make this bill good from an enforcement side. And those are comments. But it's troublesome that we can't provide this one little safeguard reassurance that property owners will be notified when we know how to contact property owners for a whole host of reasons. And this is not a very big ask. Thanks. And you know, the councilwoman Sussman, you back up. I thanks everybody for their comments. But I do want to clear up what Councilman Clark and Councilman Espinosa said, that it wouldn't make more work for the applicant. And I believe that when we had conversations about this, you worry that it would require the applicant to come down to the Webb Building to show some sort of affidavit . Can you address that? Have you figured out since we last talked that they wouldn't? I'll give Nathan a little rest as Stacey likes the director of Excise and Licenses, just to be concerned when this is over. We're just now seeing the languages. One of the concerns. Is if you have to test, you have to give an. Address. For the landlord to be able to move. On to one of our concerns. If we just went to the assessor's office as we'd be mailing that letter to the same renter who just applied for the license and it won't actually necessarily get to the landlord. So we'd have to create additional. Steps in our licensing. Process of providing who the landlord is. If it's an LLC, if it's not a real person in the contact information, and that would be information that we may not be able to do online anymore. When we kind of build out those steps, we lose some of that simplicity of being able to do the online ordinance. And it's just one of the things we don't really been able to flesh out, and it helps to see the language itself, but that is absolutely one of our concerns of it might be that tipping point of what we can do online versus not online. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to let you all know that there was some thought that it might require a trip downtown. You'll recall our issues about trying to find the owners of marijuana stores and their LLC and partnerships and trying to find an owner is is not as easy. And we might have to have the applicant themselves do that work and come and show us what that means. I also want to say that we've worked pretty hard on this bill, and while we may have missed some things, you know, I think that we have looked at many, many of these things that people are amending or trying to amend at the last minute. So and I trust that going forward, we will have a good eyes, good eyes on the process. So just have the same concern that this is sort of a last minute thing. And you can see that we're sort of doing all the committee work here on the night of the first reading. Thank you, Councilman Sussman and Councilman the clerk. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to clarify. So the assessor's office does not provide an address for the owner of the property. Those. Well, the property's mailing address will be the property itself. That may not be where the owner themselves. Lives, but a property owner. Forwarding mail. Address. So if you think of a property company, you know, four poets wrote the you know, the management company doesn't necessarily have a mailing address on file, but it's one of the things we've. Got a property owner who is concerned about getting notifications about their property can tell the assessor, I own this property, I live there and we do record the address of the property owner. It may not be required, but the assessor's office has the address for the owner. The mailing address for the owner is currently located. I don't know. That. Like I said, this is this is a really new kind of thing for us to trying to flesh out. And those are just. Questions that we have to. Well, because, again, I don't think that I don't interpret this as us happening to you. And maybe that maybe that is a problem with how it's written, that we have to go to extraordinary lengths to find the owner. I do know that you can call up any county assessor unless Denver is different from our sister counties and say, I own this property, I don't live there. Here's my address. And then notifications like weeds on your property, things that can be assessed against the property will be mailed to the owner in addition to the renter. That's already a function of our assessor's office. And so maybe the wording needs to be specific about we will mail it to the property owner of record in the assessor's office. I think we I'm assuming that's what we're doing. If that's not clear, then we could clear that up and then it would add zero additional searching. We just go to the assessor and we send it there. And if you're a property owner who doesn't want to put your address there, then you're not going to get the one about the weeds and you're not going to get the one about this. That's your choice. But we're notifying you in the way that you want to get notified as no additional work. And I think Councilman Espinosa brings up a good thing, which talks to my concern about the cost of this, that even if all 2000 of them were renters and we're paying a 50 cent stamp plus the mailing, you know, we're not breaking the bank to send this thing. And I do think that it provides a worthwhile addition to the thing to the bill. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. I just want to apologize to the audience and to my colleagues. I did, in fact, bring this up in a 1 to 1 briefing. And I brought it up in multiple committee meetings. And, you know, it was never entertained. And so that's why I'm doing what I can do as a councilperson to bring out the language directly for a vote. The you know, and I'm happy to amend the language if we think there's a simpler way. But that's exactly what I'm getting at, which is we have records of some sort and we tax these individuals from their property that they own. We should be able to connect these dots fairly easily. And and unfortunately, for some reason, in an effort to simplify the licensing process, we keep trying to downplay the sort of enforcement side. And and and this is a straightforward, direct concern because I've seen this already happen with owners of properties. They they find out that when they go to their property, it's not who they thought they were renting to. And and that is not that's that shouldn't happen when we have when it's so easy to actually correct. Think you know that. All right. Any other comments on the second motion to amend. This is my name. Is not Councilman Flynn. You got a comment? Yes, maybe I was clicking on the wrong thing. I'd like a little bit of clarification on an answer to the question that Councilwoman Sussman asked about, about an applicant being required to come down to the Webb building. That kind of went over my head because the only requirement in this amendment is for you to do something the applicant. This doesn't change any of the requirements for the applicant to attest that he or she has the permission of the property owner. What did I miss there? Would someone would an applicant have to come down to City Hall or to Webb Building? And then the other thing, while somebody is thinking of the answer is Councilman Clark is is correct that the assessor does list. I'm looking at a house right down the street from my own that is a rental. And the owner's address down in South Jefferson County is listed as the as the point of contact. So the assessor does list the addresses of the of the absentee owners. Not always is it clear if it's a natural person or not, but as long as we mail it to the same place, we send the tax bills, I assume, where they're paying our property taxes. So they ought to be able to get this notice. But could you clarify the answer about someone coming down because of having to come down because of this? I don't understand that. Or maybe Councilwoman Sussman can. Help me on. But they were the ones that told me that it might have to happen. I think it was. It's more of that. The goal of the department. Right. So the goal of the department is to make sure we have a regulatory framework that allows us to preserve an online license. Right. That's a really that's a really strong principle that we like to see move forward within this actual ordinance. So if there are as soon as there are complexities that come forward with reviewing applications in person, that's where we would have some concern. So as long as the regulatory framework itself gives us the the ability to still do that online license, that's really what we're as a department trying to keep. And how does this change that? Does this amendment change that? I think I would have to read the amendment language a little further. As I understand it, it's after the license is issued. Upon granting, you've already granted the license to the applicant, so he or she has already done what they need to do. All online, all you have to do or Stacy Schmidt delegated to you is to mail that mail that letter to that address. Right. And I think it'll just be a question of making sure we can keep track of the property owners. And we've discussed the assessor is but keeping track of the property management companies, keeping track of the losses. How frequently is that assessor's website updated? Just the department impact of making sure that we're giving the correct notice and the correct notice. The correct property owner is something that we need to determine on our own. All right. Thank you. This sounds like more of a morass than mine was about Councilman Espinosa. I'll vote for it anyway. All right. Any other comments on the motion to amend that? I was a councilman. Espinosa, you back up again. If, like, I don't know. I mean, I would be willing to amend that language to direct it towards the the the license, the primary contact on the assessor's office, not the mailing address, but the the contact. If that simplifies the management of this. You know, I'm looking to Dave, what can we vote on this motion? And then if there's a if there's a wording issue, I think we can get the intent out correctly. I mean, the lawyers can do that if people understand what the intent is or do we need to wordsmith right now, I feel as if we've had this issue before when we were talking as like we we had we voted on an amendment and we made sure that the lawyers were going to be able to flesh it out correctly. So that would be properly understanding. And I in my off base. David or the good news is we have time. Well, you well, you're a little off base. We tend to do that in committee, but not on the floor. This is going to be incorporated in the published version of the bill. You need to get the language and I hate to say this, but if if Council Councilman Espinosa wants to withdraw it and propose something else right now, or if it can be further amended on second reading, that's a possibility as well. But but we don't do conceptual amendments on the floor. We haven't historically. Okay, so let's move. Let's keep the language as is. And if there's a better way of of defining address, I'm happy to entertain that. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, any other comments on to 62? I will just add, I think that for a very small percent, I wonder if the amount of brain damage that we're putting into this. And I just I'm just joking with that. But for that small amount, I'm not sure if that's worth it to get what we want to get out of it. So I might think there might be a better way we can do this. And I will say, as a property owner, when I bought my house in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, I moved twice. Mean not one time did I ever contact the City of London to say that I had moved twice. And so maybe I'm just a bad property owner because I know they didn't know where I live. So maybe they tracked me down and I was unaware, but I didn't realize. I just think we're not getting to where we want to and where this motion is written. Madam Secretary, voting on a vote on the motion to amend. Madam Secretary, roll call. ESPINOSA Hi, Flynn. Gilmore No carnage. Lopez No new Ortega I. SUSMAN No. BLACK No. BROOKS No. CLARK All right. Mr. President. No. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank. You're good. You've got it, I. You're good. Okay. Madam Secretary, please close the voting out. The results. Five six, seven, 857. The motion to amend has been defeated. All right. So we still have our regular bill to 62, which is ordered published. Now, council members, before we get in the comments, I just want to remind you this is on first publication. There will be a robust time to comment in depth at the public hearing on June 13th should it pass. But I don't want to discourage anyone from commenting. I just wanted to remind you of that. Councilman, new Europe up. Go right ahead. Mr. Nader. Stacy, the one just to want to talk a little bit about enforcement and a little bit and right now, that's a process, right? That's illegal in the suit. It's been going on for quite a while. And what can you describe a little bit of what you're doing now to enforce the law and this is versus what you'll be able to do with this new bill? That's a great question. The current enforcement resource criminals can typically be onerous and difficult through neighborhood inspection services, and I don't know if anyone from CPD may be able to comment that or not, but typically what you will see is it's a complaint based. Someone will call 311 Neighborhood Inspection Services, an inspector will come out to the property. They'll investigate accordingly. They'll knock on the door. Someone will need to answer the door. They'll interview the person who answers the door and try and determine if they're doing a short term rental or not. They can then issue violations and citations and then the person can actually take that and appeal it to the board of adjustment of whether or not they've actually been doing a short term rental. So I think the current framework, the current options are lengthy, timely and onerous. With a licensing framework, we can actually make it much more streamlined and efficient. When we talk about two rules, we were talking about force and really talking about two different rules of enforcement. There's the enforcement of the sort of what we call common neighborhood complaints, and that may be noise, trash, parties, parking, etc. That's addressed with our existing tools that we have today through and I asked through DPD, through Environmental Health as a department, we plan on actually partnering with those departments to track those complaints on our licensees. Our licensing enforcement world will live within our own internal inspectors. We plan on actually creating a separate division within our excise and licenses inspectors. So the short term rental enforcement division that will include dedicated existing inspectors, where there are priorities throughout the work day, is to actually enforce the requirements of our licensing ordinance. That will include inspectors scanning through websites to make sure people are compliant with the license number, doing spot checks of making sure people have permission from their property owners, doing other audits to make sure that people are complying with the safety features of our of our ordinance. So it's really a joint effort between excise and licenses. Nice 311 and all of the other agencies involved to make sure that we can track and monitor the compliance within our processes as well. This is sort of a unique situation for us because we have a license that will bring forth a short term rental advisory committee and again, we'll have a community based dialog of how that enforcement is working. So the advisory committee will include hosts, non hosts, city agencies representing city council, other outside experts, and we'll be able to monitor the data that are coming in with respect to complaints and enforcement and be able to alter our framework accordingly through the work of the advisory committee. So this is certainly a working process. It's a it's a tool that we hope to continue to hone and sharpen over time. But really with the licensing component, we'll have much more tools at our disposal to revoke the privilege to operate a short term rental. Sounds like a lot more work, especially is not really being performed now. Right. And in sort of unregulated environment and the new work that you're going to have to be doing, how many more additional staff are you going to have to do this work? Right now, we're really relying on the existing inspectors. So it'll be a dedicated set of inspectors that will enforce the short term rental ordinance. Again, through our advisory committee, we'll be able to look to them for a recommendation of whether or not our staffing needs to increase and whether or not those staffing needs are on the excise and licenses side of the enforcement or on the neighborhood inspection services. But what we're really trying to do is have data driven enforcement, data driven policies. And the more that we can collect the data and collect information that will help guide the department on where those extra resources might be needed in the future. Well, it sounds a little unrealistic to think that your existing staff's going to try to do all this work that's not being performed. Well, I surely encourage you to ask for the staff that you need to get this done right and start off on the right foot. The advisory board committee will do a great job helping to monitor it. But if you start off with too few people and. You're going to have problems in the neighborhood. You're going to have a bigger issues. I think you ought to reconsider about whether your existing staff can actually perform all these responsibilities and duties force. It's a big, big issue with the neighborhoods. I've heard it over and over again. So I really encourage you to rethink what you're doing and and hope that you ask for additional staff to not only do the work, but also do it seven days a week. There needs to be some responsibilities on the weekends, too, if there's some kind of enforcement issue, too. And know I don't I'm not sure it's just an in-house issue. Maybe I think it's going to be your inspectors as well. I believe just with the weekend and evenings, there's there's tools in place now to address complaints for any residential property in Denver on the weekends or in the evenings. So the Denver Police Department is available at any time during the weekend. 311 is also available extended hours. And what our plan is to monitor and track and work with our partner agencies to look at the complaints that came in, to review those complaints and take action on the licenses if those complaints are significant enough to go to the action. Well, I just don't want us to waste a lot of police manpower, you know, when they should be doing other things, when this really responsibility should be yours. Obviously, there are situations of of of incidents at properties where they'll have to be involved. But I sure encourage your staff to pick up the load there and help enforce this ordinance, right? Absolutely. And again, the department can come back with more budget request in if future time. What we're really looking to do is collect that data and collect the information to give our department an informed decision of what those those staffing needs might be in the future. What we need to do to alter our existing framework. One last question. There will be a clear differentiation about what your inspectors will do and what you and I will do. Right. That will be really clear for the public to understand then, right? Correct. So the the the short term rental enforcement division will be doing enforcement on the actual ordinance language itself. At the same time, we'll be partnering with an IRS to look at the complaints that they've received and vice versa. So both the text amendment and the licensing ordinance, do you have the primary residency restrictions to them? We envision joint partnerships between an IRS and excise and licenses to enforce the same regulation. I think I still encourage you to make sure you have enough staff to get this job done right the first time. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman new councilman Flynn. Thank you. Mr. President, might I ask you a procedural question that I don't see addressed in our rules in four weeks, assuming that we postpone final on this 1 to 62 or you have torn to 62? Can the speakers on 261 also address you as part of the public hearing as a courtesy address? The subject matter of the licensing provisions is I can't find anything in the rules about combining hearings on two bills at the same time so that. They go ahead. Yes, of course. And that's one of the reasons why I'm going to postpone it. We don't have to have a public hearing on a licensing bill, but we will be having both these bills come up the first night. And I will welcome comment on either one of them. Okay. Thank you. Just that's why I wanted to clarify that our rules do allow speakers to address only the licensing aspect, even though the hearing is on the zoning bill. Is that that will be permitted. Yes. Thank you. Then Councilor Flynn. Any other comments on 262? Come. Katherine Espinosa. Closing comments or questions? These are these are comments to 62 as without any of the two motions. So as now it's on the floor for publication and comments or questions. So so this is my prepared statement, part of it anyway. This is a matter that impacts all residentially zoned districts. Means residentially zoned properties citywide and directly impacting neighborhoods, individuals and families, be they Denver residents or visiting star guests. I believe rulemaking should follow a vote of the people of Denver. Rulemaking on this scale citywide on a single issue should follow a vote of the people of Denver allowing str citywide. Only then council should move forward with regular with a regulatory solution better than what is currently and that should be better than what is currently being considered aimed at greater licensure, star rating or grading. Strong enforcement tools, including immediate and stiff penalties for non licensure or violations at a time when the city is struggling with displaced Homeless Persons, Council is considering a week measure only to which will only obfuscate and perpetuate a practice available only to people with an abundance of space or extra homes. While I personally support and use stars, this is not a good way to legalize and regulate stars in Denver. Proceeding with the bill and text amendments will be a missed opportunity for Denver to be a better and better model for the nation. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa in the comments to 62. I will say I'm going to vote to move this today and as well as the postponement. But I do think we can get smarter with this bill. I appreciate Councilwoman Sussman leadership on this to take this two years ago and to be very thoughtful and a lot of hearing from different people with different interest. But I think we can do better at that. And I hope over the next month, as we move this to the June 13th hearing, we can find a way to tweak this a little bit that I think will allow us to be do better, a better job of regulators. So, you know the comments. Madam Secretary, roll call. SUSMAN My black. Eye. BROOKS Clark. ESPINOSA No. Flynn No. Gilmore I can ege. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Mr. President. I. Councilwoman Houston. All right, Madam Secretary, please. Because it's only now the results. Tennis tune in two days to 62 has been published. Now, Councilwoman Sussman, what would you like to do with 262 right now? Thank you, Mr. President. Accountable to 62 is, of course, a companion bill. The council bills to 61, which will have a required public hearing on June 13th. So in order to move the two bills together and to allow comments on both, I would like to postpone final consideration of this license bill. Council Bill 262 to Monday, June 13th. All right, let's get this on the floor. Councilman Lopez, will you please put 262 on the floor to be postponed? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 262 that final consideration accountable to has to be postponed to Monday, June 13th. It has been moved and seconded. Any additional comments seen and voted on the postponement? Madam Secretary. Roll Call. Sussman Black Eye. Brooks. Clark. Espinosa. Flynn. Gilmore. I can each. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Hi, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary. Please, for the very nice results. 12 eyes 12 by final consideration of two, 62 has been postponed to Monday, June 13th. All right. Those were all the bills that were called out. So all of the bills for introduction already published. Ready for the block votes. Councilman Lopez, will you please put the resolutions on the floor for adoption in a block? Thank you, Mr. President. I move. So that Council has the following council resolutions all series of 2016 be adopted. Its Council resolutions 289 939 166 303 12. Yep, that's it. And you just want to note that 939 is series of 2015. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. I didn't see that. Thank you. Now, got it. It has been moved and seconded. Seen the comments from our secretary roll call. Can each Lopez. Right. Knew Ortega. Susman High black Brooks. High. Clerk. ALL Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. All right. Gilmore, I. Mr. President. Hi. Council members. Brooks. Oh, yeah. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Secretary, please, for the very nice results. 1212 eyes resolutions have been adopted in a block. Councilman Lopez, would you please put the bills on final consideration on the floor for final passage in a block? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that the following bills upon final consideration, will be placed upon final consideration and do pass and block all series of 2016 to 90 8 to 80 2 to 96 and to 97. Is then moved. And second, Encino comments. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Brooks Clark. All right. Espinosa. Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. I can eat. Lopez. I knew Ortega. I. Susman, I. Mr. President, I. Madam Secretary, please follow the voting results. 1212. The bills placed on fine consideration do pass and the BLOCK Council is now convened as a board of the directors for the River North Denver General Improvement District. Since we are sitting as the official board of directors for the Reno Denver General Improvement District, there are two bills that we considered last week that we published, and we