And welcome to our public safety and criminal justice committee hearing where we will review the current policies and procedures on managing short-term rentals in the City of Columbus.

Several city staff members are in in attendance today to present and share these processes, share more about these processes.

In addition, we will learn about policies and ordinances in other cities in relation to regulation regulating short-term rentals.

I would like to welcome our presenters today, Deputy Chief Smith Weir from the Columbus Division of Police, Tony Celebris, Deputy Director of the Department of Building and Zoning Services, Kevin McCain, Senior Policy Advisor for Columbus City Council, and Rashida Hansard, the Director of Income Tax for the Auditor's Office.

Of course, we have other staff here today, but we thank you for coming in to help answer any questions.

I'm Councilmember Emmanuel Reemy, I chair the public safety and criminal justice committee.

I'd like to thank my colleague, Councilmember Otto Beatty, for attending today.

And a reminder that this hearing is currently live on YouTube and Facebook and also live and being recorded for rebroadcast on CTB Columbus's government television channel three.

I want to share before we get begin that this hearing is exploratory and informational in nature.

That means we are not currently considering any language changes to the Columbus City Code.

Our goal today is to share with the community the work city staff currently engage in to regulate short-term rentals, hear about what other cities are doing, and then hear from our residents.

My office will work in partnership with the community going into the new year to identify the best improvements possible to ordinances and policies that work for everyone.

So without further ado, I would like to turn the floor over to our first presenter, Deputy Chief Smith Weir from the Columbus Division of Chief.

The Deputy Chief will present on the current situation regarding trespassing individuals at short-term rentals.

So thank you all for thank you, sir, for being here.

And Deputy Chief, the floor is yours.

Good evening.

On behalf of Chief Elaine Bryant and the rest of the Division of Police, thank you for the opportunity to come here and address City Council today.

Typically, when officers respond to residents or properties in the City of Columbus, they are contacting an owner or somebody or a responsible party of that of that establishment.

When we are responding to short-term rentals, uh, the agent or owner is not always readily available, nor is a landlord or a responsible party.

We receive these calls for service all hours of the day and night.

Oftentimes when the responsible parties are at work or at home or even asleep.

Sometimes when seconds count, when minutes count when we have to a situation we are dealing with, uh we are faced with a situation where we do not have the ability to contact where the owner is unavailable.

In those situations with businesses and other properties throughout the City of Columbus, for years, the City of Columbus and Division of Police have utilized the agent authorization letters or otherwise known as the trespass authorization letters.

These are signed by the owner or the landlord or responsible party and authorize the division of police and the city of Columbus to act on agents on the owner's behalf to conduct trespass of individuals that are on the property that are not acting legally or under the authority or the rules of the short-term rental in this instance.

The division of police currently has 2,273 agent authorization letters on file from properties throughout the City of Columbus and utilize these on a day-to-day basis throughout the City of Columbus.

It is our belief that requiring agent authorization letters to be signed as part of the permitting process for short-term rentals would be a responsible way for the short-term rental companies or owners to authorize us to solve problems when they are unavailable to solve them themselves.

Thank you, Deputy Chief.

Um, thinking about, you know, I maybe we should have prefaced this a little bit that you know, one of the things that we're trying to solve here is the few uh short-term rentals that happen to have parties, whether they be, you know, more than likely the hosts don't know about it, but but certainly this does happen in many of the platforms.

They ban those types, you know, that type of number of people and et cetera, but we know that they've occurred across the city.

Um I'm familiar with, certainly per familiar as a community leader back in my old days uh with trespass forms and trying to, you know, especially at shopping centers and others where you might have semis parking and other you know reasons why you might need to get on to the property.

Um we used to encourage the owners to sign those things.

I kind of want to just illustrate to the hosts again, like what tell me some types of things that these things would apply for beyond a party for for instance.

Like would when would this be applicable for you know to make sure that our officers can get on the property?

Yeah, I obviously the the number one reason or the number one thing we're concerned about are those large parties that have resulted in uh altercations or on a couple instances they've resulted in shootings over the past couple years.

Uh that being said, the number one offense that we've responded to at uh short-term rentals has been domestic violence.

Uh and then second, you know, secondary to that are domestic disturbances, which don't haven't risen to the level of violence yet, uh, but in which we have parties that are uh arguing that are uh in conflict that are having uh having issues and having troubles.

So in that instance, having an agent authorization, even though the illegal activity has not occurred yet, whether that assault is not occurred yet, but when we're trying to solve the problem of separating the parties, uh that would give legal authority for officers to act as an agent on behalf of the owner and trespass one of those individuals or both of those individuals from that property uh, you know, for the duration of that that evening or for the duration of their contract, uh their rental contract.

Uh so in that instance, it would be a way that prior to uh situation escalating the violence, we could solve the problem uh in instances where the owner or agent may be unavailable.

So explain today what what some of the problems have been for officers, you know, without this form today.

Yeah, I I think you know, again, the the big problem has been those large-scale parties.

Um because they typically, when we're getting called, it's middle of the night, it's 11, 12, 1 in the morning.

Uh officers are there.

Uh we've had instances where there are promoters that are promoting these parties that are at the door that are checking, you know, that are basically charging admission.

Uh the line is out the door down the sidewalk, uh, and officers are trying to deal with this uh in you know, in real time, uh in the middle of the night, and try to figure out who the owner of the rental is, try to find the contact information, try to wake them up and contact them.

Uh meanwhile, we've got uh you know young adults and even some juveniles that are trying to attend this party that are in their house, and the officers are again trying to get the authorization to solve the problem, to you know, break up the party to get you know those juveniles uh taken home uh to get the young adults to to go their separate ways.

Um and in in the matter of minutes, those are those are important things for us to have to deal with.

And sometimes it's uh it's very difficult in the middle of the night to get a hold of a responsible party.

If there was a trespass form, how would that same scenario be handled?

Well, if we had the trespass form on site and uh we had that authorization, officers uh the way we work it is that those authorizations, once they're signed, get uploaded to a system that the officers have access to in their cruisers on their phones, uh 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So whenever the time is, uh once they identify that the property itself is a short-term rental, they can look up, make sure that that authorization form has been signed, and then they have the legal authority to detain somebody.

They have the legal authority to issue that trespass.

If the you know the rules that have been established in the permitting process are not being followed, we don't have to wait for the owner uh to answer the phone to drive from an hour away or or wherever they may be.

Uh we don't have to wait for that to solve the problem.

And in the middle of the night, like I said, as things are happening, uh, we're not always uh you know afforded the luxury of time.

Understood.

Councilmember, do you have any questions?

Okay.

Well, we appreciate the recommendation.

I know these discussions have been occurring and trying to figure out ways that we can help solve that one that one problem in particular.