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TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: Law Department
DATE: December 27, 2022
SUBJECT:
Proposed amendments to Chapter 41.5 of the Code of Ordinances pertaining to special events.
PURPOSE:
To further refine the City's policies and procedures for reviewing and approving special events.
BACKGROUND:
Until 2018, the Code of Ordinances provided very little guidance to City officials with respect to the review or approval of special events, including parades and other festivals. While the code provided that the former Government Operations Committee was empowered to issue permits, it did not set forth any criteria for the committee to use to evaluate requests.
In early 2018, the City Council added Chapter 41.5 to the Code of Ordinances. The new chapter provided policies and procedures for the special events office to follow when evaluating permit applications, classified events into multiple tiers, and provided for cost recovery procedures. It also shifted the authority to issue permits to the special events coordinator, establishing an administrative approval process in place of the former legislative process.
Following a special events "hiatus" resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic, it became apparent that further adjustments to the ordinance were necessary in order to properly define what party (the City or a permittee) were responsible for what costs for special events. While the City recognizes its obligation to protect First Amendment speech, the obligation does not require the City to shoulder all of the costs of a special event - particularly when the size and scope of a special event create costs that exceed what the Constitution requires the public to bear.
DISCUSSION:
Because the attached redline includes numerous provisions Chapter 41.5, it may appear to the reader that substantial revisions to the Ordinance have been proposed. This is not the case -- many of the proposed changes are stylistic (to mirror other provisions of the Code), remove redundan...
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