Can city government be too responsive?

A couple of recent proposals by the city of South Bend brings up this question. The Mayor's office and the city Common Council have recently announced proposals addressing hotel/motels and vacant/abandoned homes, respectively. These were issues raised by the Mayor's opponents in the run-up to his successful re-election. The former under the umbrella of crime, and the latter as a quality of life issue.

Both of these proposals are pretty sweeping, and arguably onerous. We'll save the building issue for later, and focus on the motel issue today.

The city proposes to create three tiers of temporary residence designations. The ones most of us would use if we needed to, the ones we would probably avoid and the ones we really don't like. The basis for this designation is police calls - if I have this right. This seems an odd approach to me. All these businesses are in the same line of work. We should expect them to conform with city ordinances and penalize them if they don't. If we think we need stricter ordinances, then we should enact them - but they should apply to all enterprises in the same line of work. This proposal seems to want to initiate a commercial caste system and seems likely to run afoul of issues similar to those which struck down provisions of an earlier adult business ordinance.

And I wonder if the requirements thrust on the "untouchable" caste of motels are even desirable.

For example, the "untouchables" would be required to turn away people wanting to sleep off a bender - because they are not supposed to admit people under the influence of intoxicants. The clerk at the South Bend Motel would then be compelled to say "You can't sleep here, but if you've got the cash, drive drunk up to one of the downtown tier one motels. They're allowed to register you."

The Untouchables would also require photo identification of clients - but not the other two castes. So, a homeless person who's able to scrape up enough cash for a place to crash could be denied that bed just for lack of a picture ID.

It's hard to see the benefit to the citizens in either of these cases.

It's pretty long list of requirements imposed on these businesses, and it's hard to see how the city would have any ability to enforce them - unless they plan to routinely station police officers at the two designated untouchable motels. But they could do that now, without the ordinance. After all, the whole idea is to inhibit criminal activity.

One likely outcome would be for eager entrepreneurs to open cheap motels just outside the city limits (there are a few already). That would exempt them from these requirements, but wouldn't help the city much in it's objective.

No, this looks like a mess, with enforcement and possible constitutional issues as well.

There are complicated issues involved and I don't claim to have simple anwers. But I believe the city should look at a different approach.

Here's the link to the South Bend Tribune article about this proposal. See what you think.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071119/News01/711190348/1011/News

Don Wheeler