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REGULAR MEETING May 9, 2016 have public input on how it is working. He proposed doing a one (1) year review on September 1St, 2017 and see the input of the community and effect of the bill. From Code Enforcement, only twenty -eight percent (28 %) of violations with Code are with owner occupied houses. The owners of these leased properties are sixty -six percent (66 %) versus thirty -two percent (32 %) outside of the City. We still are searching whether they are within our area or not due to the LLC factor where people register these houses in an LLC and they are not fully vetted by the County or the State and they can be bogus LLC organizations. This bill allows our City Administration to take care of business in South Bend. Councilmember Scott provided a map of the City highlighting the houses that are rented in the City either as owned by someone within South Bend, Indiana or outside the State. He also provided a typical online form and what that would look like, he used the Bloomington form as the example where they have not heard anything negative or lawsuits. It is a simple form with pull -down options or fill in the box. Councilmember Scott quoted the Mayor at his State of the City address saying, "The upcoming Landlord Registration Bill will further enhance accountability and ensure the City has a point of contact for every property we encounter. This is not just about finding irresponsible landlords, it's about making sure we can keep in touch with the majority of landlords who are doing the right thing." Just like any good business, communication is the most important factor. Councilmember Scott invited various department heads to come up and tell the Council why this is such needed legislation. Randy Wilkerson, Director of Code Enforcement with offices on the 13th Floor of the County - City Building, expressed his support for the bill. If a property is unsafe, such as not having gas, water or electric, they would issue a twenty -four (24) hour letter meaning they would have to fix those issues immediately due to their serious nature. When we do not have the information of these owners we cannot provide those letters and we are keeping people in homes considered unsafe because we do not have the information in front of us. If the person can get to the department the problem can be solved. The department does one - hundred and eight (10 8) code hearings each year, of those about half are LLCs and many of those are undeliverable and we cannot locate the owner. The problem is we have no one to hold accountable if we cannot get ahold of them. This year, the department purchased software to help them track down people but there are so many of these LLCs that have either disbanded or have false information. Many of these are historic properties that we do not want to tear down. All this bill does is give the department a chance to find resolutions for these properties. By being able to contact people we can solve these problems. These issues currently take a lot of time and a lot of manpower that could be used on better things. Mr. Wilkerson explained the department has the ability to seek an inspection warrant and those warrants can only be served on the property owner, not the LLC or the P.O. Box. They have to physically hand deliver that warrant to the owner. There is a property currently on Brookfield that the neighbors have been asking us to look into but they have no one to serve that warrant and the occupants won't let us in and we know bad things are going on in there but we can't do anything about it. A lot of people are concerned that we are getting this information but it all comes back to the communication. If we have contact information we can send courtesy emails that tell the owner they have trash on their property and we can resolve it before we have to cite anyone. Steve Cox, Chief of the South Bend Fire Department with offices at 1222 S. Michigan St., spoke in favor of the bill as well. Firefighting is a team sport and the department does not do it by themselves. In order to properly investigate a fire scene, we have to be able to notify the landowner and discuss what occurred with the actual landlord associated with the building. Our investigators currently spend approximately a third of their time chasing down landlords in regards to vacant buildings. Typically it takes them two (2) to three (3) hours of their time that they should be spending on figuring out what caused the fire and instead we are searching for landlords. Most of the time it is due to incomplete data, wrong data or folks moving away and never updating information. This registry would be a tool to allow the fire investigators to be able to contact those landlords. For the Fire Department it doesn't matter if it is an LLC or a private owner, they need to have a point of contact to be able to speak to the needs at the scene pertaining to the fire. They have a current investigation where they and the police found some illegal activity was taking place at the home and they have been attempting to get ahold of the 9