11-29-2018, 05:24 PM
(11-29-2018, 05:05 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: I hope not. It’s hard enough to run a rental property without having parental responsibility for ones tenants.
That's a fair point.
Ultimately I'm trying to get the charges back to the students, as I agree with the assertion above that they are ultimately the ones responsible for the cost. If the landlords are fined, they would increase rent (or more likely divest themselves of the property or stop renting it to students, which aren't great solutions). Is there precedent for the city charging a private individual for costs related to emergency services? I know that ambulance trips aren't covered by insurance, and there is a fine for pulling a fire alarm when there isn't a fire.
If police come to a house party because of noise complaints or some such, are the residents (homeowner or tenant or whatever relationship to the property they have) on the hook for the cost of the police response? Wages, fuel, etc?
I suspect not, but genuinely don't know. It seems to me that typically this is the kind of cost the community absorbs. While the scale is extremely different, it makes sense to me that we should continue doing so. I respect that people don't want their taxes going to support a party they don't like, but there's any number of things I dislike my taxes supporting, and any number of taxes I wish I could pay for different services.
I still don't have a strong opinion, but I am not seeing anything in this thread that persuades me that the party should be stopped or that anyone but existing budgets should pay for whatever resource pressure it creates. As Dan pointed out, the students are taxpayers (if not directly through property tax, then indirectly through rent) and like all other taxpayers they burden the system in some ways and benefit it in others.