11 - Motel Ordinance Request - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No. 11 memorandum TO: City Council Gene Anderson, Interim City Manager FROM: Bob Hundley, Chief of Police SUBJECT: MOTEL ORDINANCE REQUEST DATE: October 2, 2019 BACKGROUND: A citizen presented the council with a petition requesting adoption of an ordinance that would help control criminal activities at local hotels and rental properties in the city. An ordinance from the city of Grand Prairie was also presented as an example of what that city and others had put into place for crime control. STATUS OF ISSUE: The city council directed the chief of police to review the Grand Prairie ordinance and see what could be used here in Paris with respect to hotels and motels. I researched the total of police calls for service at each hotel for one full year; September of 2018 through September of 2019. Since the hotels do not all have the same number of rooms, the total calls of service at each were divided by the number of rooms at each to provide a "calls for service (`CFS') per room" ratio. It would not be appropriate to judge a 40 room hotel straight across to a hotel with 114 rooms. There is a quite a difference of the CFS numbers per room ratio at our hotels. This ratio ranges from the lowest at 8 CFS, to the highest of 129 CFS in the 12 months. The hotels are of varying ages, locations and ownership. An outside physical inspection of each hotel revealed well lighted parking lots, some entry ways and walkways that could be better illuminated but nothing extraordinary that would invite criminal activity. The hotels are primarily on the NE Loop in business areas with others bordering residential areas. Contact was made with the owners, front desk personnel or managers regarding the procedures used when patrons are renting rooms. An immediate correlation was found. All hotels in Paris require a personal identification to rent a room but those hotels which required a government identification card along with a major credit card (even if paying with cash or check) had noticeably lower CFS than those motels which did not require a credit card, accepting cash as payment and less expensive.