After months of workshopping and rewriting an ordinance aimed at keeping rental properties in Butler up to a uniform standard, City Councilman Don Shearer said he plans to introduce the ordinance for vote at Thursday’s meeting, Feb. 22.

If council passes the ordinance Shearer said it still would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2025, and city administrators would spend the rest of this year deciding on how to implement its policies.

Over the past several months, Shearer has had meetings with individual landlords as well as groups of rental unit owners in the city regarding how the ordinance should be worded and implemented. What initially started as a “rental inspection ordinance” has become more of a landlord-tenant relations ordinance, in which the city could get involved if a tenant reports issues with a rental unit.

Shearer said if a tenant reports issues with a unit they are renting, they can file a grievance through the city.

“Before this ordinance, that was a civil (court) concern … we’re making it a concern from the city,” Shearer said. “The ordinance does ask that the landlord provide info from the Landlord-Tenant Act to their tenants, and it addresses concerns with self help evictions, where the landlord intentionally alters the habitability of a property to get a tenant to move out.”

According to Shearer, there could be up to 2,400 rental units in Butler, which includes the senior high-rise apartments, recovery houses and units owned by the city or county housing authorities.

Landlords who attended meetings with Shearer in November and in early-February took issue with points of the ordinance that said their units would be inspected each time a tenant moved out before a new one could move in; a point which is no longer part of the ordinance.

Larry Rogers said he was representing landlords at both meetings. He said in February that the landlords would cooperate with the city regarding documents about occupancy, but he would fight against having landlords pay the city to have their units inspected.

The proposal being drafted by the city’s solicitor, Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter and Graham, will require landlords to fill out checklists for specific aspects of the unit, and for the foreseeable future, city firefighters will walk through a unit if the form is not provided.

Shearer said until the city is able to hire enough code enforcement officers to perform walk-throughs on rental units that are out of compliance with the ordinance, city firefighters will focus on safety aspects of the units using submitted photos.

“The idea is that these forms would be submitted along with photos the city requests,” Shearer said. “The firemen on duty would quickly review the photos, and if they see something of concern, reach out to landlord.”

Shearer said the initial draft of the ordinance called for the hiring of an additional code enforcement officer who would inspect rental properties for compliance. Although the ordinance has changed, Shearer said he plans to advocate for funding in the budget to hire a second code enforcement officer, even though the only code enforcement officer position has been vacant since mid-2023.

“The second one would not be assigned specifically for this program — originally with the way that it was set up, we needed a second full-time officer just for the program,” he said. “Since there is not a formal inspection taking place, that officer would not be specifically responsible for this job.”

The ordinance, Shearer said, could be amended throughout 2024 before it officially takes effect next year. He added that the ordinance could help cut down on the number of unverified recovery houses in the city, which could be taking advantage of people in addiction recovery.

“That’s been a concern since day one, figuring out the implications on those much larger properties,” Shearer said. “Over the course of the rest of this year, once we pass the ordinance, we will be figuring out the implementation.”

Shearer said the council will vote on the ordinance Thursday, unless the proposal has not been completed by the city’s solicitor.