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Addison staff outlines tiered public‑safety component for hotel and motel registration
Summary
Town staff proposed adding a public‑safety tier to the lodging registration program that would classify hotels by calls‑for‑service per room and trigger education and enforcement steps — including potential certificate‑of‑occupancy actions for repeat high‑call properties. Council directed staff to return with ordinance details.
Town staff presented a proposal to add a public‑safety component to Addison’s lodging and rental registration program that uses a calls‑for‑service (CFS) per‑room ratio to sort hotels into two tiers and target resources.
The proposal, presented by Chris Friess, uses 12 months of patrol and service‑call data. Staff reported the 22 properties in the town’s dataset generated 2,015 calls for service over the period; four properties accounted for about 57% of those calls. Under the draft approach, Tier 1 would include properties at or below 1 CFS per room per year; Tier 2 would be properties above that threshold.
Staff said the program would pair monitoring with an education and remediation process. Properties identified in Tier 2 would receive notification, an on‑site meeting with neighborhood services and police, and recommended, evidence‑based steps to reduce calls — for example, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), lighting and landscaping changes, or operation‑specific recommendations. If a property remains above the threshold, staff said the town could pursue progressive actions, culminating in pulling a certificate of occupancy in the most persistent cases.
Council members asked about data definitions and fairness: staff said they would exclude owner‑initiated calls originating from the property (e.g., management reporting incidents) and count only calls where officers responded on a unit located at the property. Members also pressed whether the town would weight call severity; staff said their intention was to use an objective numeric trigger to avoid the appearance of targeting and to focus on where the town is dedicating disproportionate resources.
Several council members expressed support for exploring the ordinance language and implementation mechanics. Staff said they plan to include owner notification during the January 2026 renewal cycle, add a public education component, and return with code and enforcement details for council consideration.
