There is no formal action expected on this item since it is being presented at a Work Session. Staff is seeking Council direction and input so that these ordinance amendments may be placed on a Regular Council Meeting agenda in March for Council to take formal action. 

The Code Enforcement Division works with many sections of the Billings Municipal Code daily and is continuing to see where code amendments will make its job easier in terms of enforcement, communication with the public and moving cases smoothly through Municipal Court. Staff also has heard from City Council members that there is interest in providing further help and support from Council to continue to improve the quality of life, safety and neighborhood stability efforts that Code Enforcement is part of. Making some changes to our City ordinances is a very effective way of helping to achieve these goals. CE Manager Tina Hoeger, Deputy City Attorney Todd Corne, PCSD Director Wyeth Friday, and City Attorney Gina Dahl have worked over the past several months to draft preliminary changes to three different City ordinances: Nuisance, Graffiti, and Boarded Structures. Red-lined versions of all three of these ordinances are attached to this memo for your review. In addition, a set of Powerpoint slides describing the three ordinances and the reasons for the proposed changes is also attached. Staff will walk the City Council through these proposed changes at the meeting to receive feedback so that we can finalize the ordinance amendments and bring them to Council for a public hearing and formal action in March.

Staff was able to coordinate a meeting with City Administration, City Legal, Council Member Rupsis, and Council Member Owen on February 6 (Council Member Shaw and Council Member Joy were invited but unable to attend) to review the three draft ordinances before we brought them to the full Council. They provided important feedback which we were able to address in the drafts provided for this Work Session. They also were supportive of bringing these changes forward to the full Council for review and discussion.

It is important to note that the nuisance ordinance is updated with language to make it the foundation for the other two ordinances.  The nuisance ordinance provides instructions on how cases will be handled, the notification processes, abatement, collection of costs, court process, etc.  By doing this, we have significantly shortened the other two ordinances because they refer to sections in the nuisance code. So, when large sections are shown as crossed out, this is related to the consolidation of processes into the nuisance section of the code. We are excited to share the proposed drafts and the reasons behind the work we have done, and to have Council help make some of these ordinances stronger for our community.
 

The residence of Billings will ultimately benefit from making these ordinance amendments as the changes will increase efficiency of enforcement, better clarity of the codes so people understand their rights and obligations under the City code, and easier application of the codes by the City Code Enforcement Division. There will be opportunity for public comment on these ordinance amendments when the proposed changes are brought to City Council for First Reading a Public Hearing is conducted.

At this point this item is informational so there are not really alternatives at this time. If the Council were to direct staff not to move this item forward at this meeting, then we would follow that direction.

There are no direct fiscal impacts from reviewing and discussing these ordinance amendments. If the Council does move forward and approve the ordinances changes, there could be some advantages of efficiency and process that might be fiscally beneficial. However, it would be difficult to measure them given the overall complexity of some of these enforcement processes.