There has been a lot of talk about the proposed Social Host Ordinance and how it will affect the city of Eugene, especially students. The ordinance deals with “unruly gatherings,” which are defined as “a party or gathering of five or more persons where alcohol is served or consumed” that also causes something such as a noise disturbance or disorderly conduct.
It goes on to discuss what would happen if the Eugene Police Department has to go to one of these gatherings stating, “If an unruly gathering occurs at the same private property more than three times in a twelve-month period, the owner of the property shall be liable for response costs for the fourth and any subsequent occurrence that occurs within a twelve-month period of three other occurrences at the same property.”
The first three responses are met with warnings, but if the police must respond to a property a fourth time, the owner of the property will be charged for response costs, which are “the costs associated with responses by law enforcement, fire and other emergency response providers to unruly gatherings.”
While this could cut down on noise violations in Eugene, some still have concerns with the current draft. According to Mallard Properties manager Kathy Jo Leom, the ordinance only takes into account the address of a property even if it has multiple units.@@http://us.linkedin.com/pub/kathy-jo-leom/3/763/72@@
“The way the Social Host Ordinance has been presented now does not connect the party and the response to a specific person or specific apartment,” she said. “So if you have a complex of 20 apartments and 80 people, there could be multiple events at one address that are different people/apartments.”
She believes that the response should be connected to a specific person, because that way it would follow that person to different properties. Another thing that could happen is that if a property already has three responses and a new tenant moves in, that person could possibly incur a fourth response and a fine.
“If you are the new tenant that moved into the unit, and the unit has had three prior responses, you would be at a fourth response to the property, but the first party that you had. Your first party could be the property’s fourth response, which isn’t fair to those tenants that are moving in who are unaware and didn’t get a first response,” Leom said. “They should be responsible for their own first response.”