Kent’s Criminal Activity Nuisance Ordinance: Helpful or harmful?

Last fall, twelve bills totaling more than $2,000 were sent to properties in Kent with nuisance violations. This fall, only two bills have been issued. Together, these total a little less than $200.

Kent’s Criminal Activity Nuisance Ordinance allows the police department to bill landowners for the amount of time public officials spend on their properties due to nuisance violations caused by owners, tenants or guests of the property.

Administrative Lieutenant Jim Prusha says one possible reason for the decline in nuisance violation bills this year is because many landowners have begun passing the bills onto tenants responsible for the violations, causing a lot of residents to start behaving themselves.

Alan Weinstein, Associate Professor and Director of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, however, says the decline may be because the ordinance, passed by city council in 2004, raises “some serious concerns.”

Are innocent victims afraid to call for help?

He says that if a resident is exposed to violence on the property caused by other residents or guests, the innocent victim may be afraid to call the police due to the threat of being fined or evicted.

[pullquote]We hold the landlords responsible… — Lt. Jim Prusha[/pullquote]“We hold the landlords responsible, but a lot of times, the landlords will pass that responsibility along to their tenants, so they straighten up,” Prusha says. “Not only are they getting in trouble for the original reason we went there, but they’re also having their landlord call, threatening to evict them.”

Although Prusha says this causes “a lot of residents to think twice,” that may not be a good thing, according to Matt Hiscock, attorney and Director of Public Safety in Wadsworth, Ohio.

Over the summer, Hiscock met with Kent safety officials to discuss a similar criminal activity nuisance ordinance passed in Wadsworth in July.

After the ordinance was passed, he explains the city of Wadsworth ran into challenges that Kent’s ordinance may raise as well.

“We have some concerns on the ‘chilling effect’ that the ordinance may have for those who may be victims of crimes,” Hiscock explains.

While the city of Wadsworth is looking into these concerns with its new ordinance, Prusha says in Kent, this issue has been addressed.

“I screen each report prior to billing a landlord. If an offense occurs at a property where the resident is a victim, that would not be counted,” he says. “We wouldn’t want to deter anyone from calling the police if they were a victim.”

According to Weinstein, other concerns surrounding Kent’s ordinance center on its billing policy.

Weinstein says local governments can only assess the reasonable cost of providing services to those in the community.

“What a government may not do,” he says, “is make a profit on those services by charging more than the reasonable cost. The ordinance may or may not meet that standard.”

The cost of bills sent to landowners, Prusha says, is based on the hourly wages of the highest paid public official who responds to an incident, multiplied by the amount of time officials spend at the property, plus 75 percent.

“If it’s a big event where ten officers respond,” he says, “it’s more expensive.”

In addition, the ordinance states that the minimum amount of time for which a landowner can be billed is one hour.

“Even if we were there for twenty minutes,” Prusha says, “we count it as an hour.”

Nuisance violation bills can pile up fast

Last year, two properties racked up close to $1,000 in fines in just a few months. These properties, located on University Drive and East College Avenue, were billed several times for things like littering, nuisance parties and unlawful noise.

Of nineteen bills sent to landowners in the last two years, four were less than $100 and only one was less than $50. The remainder of bills ranged from $150 to almost $500 each.

Weinstein explains that the one hour minimum charge for incidents which take much less than an hour to resolve may not be considered reasonable, causing the city to profit from the fees by charging an unfair amount. In addition, he says the 75% charge is only lawful if it represents overhead expenses associated with nuisance violations.

“The city should be able to demonstrate what that 75% figure is based on,” he says.

According to Kent’s Budget and Finance Department Controller Brian Huff, the money collected from nuisance violation bills is integrated into the city’s operating budget along with things like court and parking ticket fees. He says the 75% additional charge is “just following the ordinance.” Records from the 2004 council meeting when the bill was passed show that the 75% was simply added as an administrative fee.

Hiscock says a billing policy similar to Kent’s was considered for Wadsworth, but the city chose to go in a different direction by charging a flat fee for each nuisance violation accumulated after three violations within six months.

“After researching both abatement cost formulas,” Hiscock says, “we settled on an abatement fee that we felt as a city was fair, not heavy-handed, and would aid in recouping costs for habitually offending address locations that were drains on law enforcement and other city resources.”

Hiscock says this decision had nothing to do with the fairness of Kent’s legislation, however, explaining that each community is different.

“Well-crafted ordinances that are designed to address local concerns and issues…” he says, “offer the most potential to be effective legislative tools to use to address public safety concerns while protecting the nature, character and quality of communities from a one-neighborhood-at-a-time approach.”

Kent State University Professor and Attorney Brian Dengler says the ordinance remains legal until challenged. So far, it has not been challenged in the city of Kent, and Prusha believes it has been helpful in reducing nuisance violations.

“In most cases, I think it’s been effective,” he says. “People tend to be responsive once it starts hitting their wallets. I think some landlords have put the pressure on their tenants to behave themselves, knowing that they’re going to have to pay money if they don’t.”