The Metropolitan Council on Aug. 5 deferred two meetings consideration of ordinance BL2025948, which would require council members to be notified before settlement of certain property-standards cases if the settlement amount exceeds $1,000.

Council sponsor (unnamed) said the measure is intended to give council members a chance to discuss district clean‑up work with the Department of Law before settlements are finalized. "When it gets to the final part of the court proceedings, if there's to be some type of settlement, we, as council members, would be notified if it's above a thousand dollars prior to a settlement," the sponsor said.

The deferral gives the sponsor and Metro staff time to resolve practical issues raised by the Department of Law. Brooke Kavaner, lead attorney for environmental court in the Department of Law, told the council that the ordinance as written would substantially increase the office's administrative workload and that timing in the court schedule could make the proposed notice window difficult to meet. "I did an inventory of our July dockets, and we would have to be sending out about 75 notices," Kavaner said. "We are also litigating about 300 cases a week." She added that the court's finalized docket is not always available seven days before court — sometimes it is five days or only the morning of court — which would complicate compliance with the ordinance as drafted.

Council members discussed possible changes to the monetary threshold in the ordinance. The sponsor said the $1,000 figure was a working number and suggested the top threshold could be moved into the $3,000–$5,000 range based on case origin and prior examples. The sponsor said the goal is to focus council notice on long-term or high-dollar offenders rather than every matter that reaches court.

Members also discussed routine case-tracking tools. Kavaner said the clerk's office provides a weekly list of cases and staff noted that the Metro Codes data viewer and ePermits can be used to search property‑standards cases by ZIP code and council district. One council member asked whether the clerk or Metro Legal could run a district-sorted report; Kavaner said the list of cases would come from the clerk's office and that the office typically issues a weekly list on the Wednesday before the Tuesday court date.

On a motion to defer the ordinance two meetings to the council's first September meeting, the council voted in favor and the deferral was approved. No final vote on the ordinance was taken; the item will return after staff and legal refine timing and thresholds.

The sponsor said staff and the Department of Law will reconvene to adjust language and timing before the item returns to the council docket.