By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members have enacted additional requirements for organizers of special events, especially those held around properties owned by other governmental entities.
The council unanimously approved an ordinance adding requirements for permitting of special events during its Aug. 13 meeting.
Before inviting council members to discuss the ordinance, Mayor Al Arreola recognized Chief Judge Alia Moses, who was in the audience, and invited her to address the council.
Moses told the council, “I’m here because we’ve had some incidents that came up in these last few weeks regarding special events that affect the federal courthouse and the property of the federal courthouse.
“We have a buffer around the courthouse since the Oklahoma City (federal courthouse) bombing. We now have had to have a buffer zone, so now if I have a new courthouse built in Del Rio, I have to have five acres as an offset for the protection of the courthouse. Because we entered this building prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, we don’t have the offset, so that creates some special problems for the federal court.
“In the last few weeks, there was an event that happened, and it was at first blocking the federal courthouse parking lot, and so I brought that to their attention, and it was changed to a certain extent. We still had some problems using the federal courthouse because I had to block off our parking lot, so we weren’t able to work on a Saturday – and yes, we do work on Saturdays – because of these special requirements and conditions.
“What I found out in the process is that the city doesn’t have any limitations in the type of events that you have on the public streets of Del Rio. What I understand is the only ordinance you have is that if everybody meets the qualifications for the closing of the streets, that’s all that they have to do.
“That’s my understanding that that’s the only requirement the city has. In this particular event, those required agreements by everybody did not occur, although the city still had to give the permit to the people that were conducting (the event).
“I am the chief administrative officer for the Del Rio Division. I am the chief administrative officer for the Western District of Texas. I was not notified of any of these matters. I did not give my consent, and my concern is, without some kind of ordinance that also considers the special circumstances of the location around the federal courthouse, that we’re going to be in this kind of conversation again in the future, and that’s one of my concerns.
“I don’t want to get in the way of the city having any type of events. I don’t want to be in the position of monitoring any kind of events, but you don’t have anything that monitors what kind of events you have or where you have them, and that is my concern in terms of our situation,” Moses finished.
The event to which Moses was referring was a recent bull-riding exhibition held downtown, although she did not name the event while speaking to council.
After Moses spoke, Mayor Pro-tem Jim DeReus thanked her for her comments and said, “I was not aware about that buffer zone, so given that, I would like to make a motion to postpone this to make sure (the city attorney has) incorporated that type of thing in (the proposed ordinance).”
City Attorney Ana Markowski Smith replied, “Basically what I added to the ordinance. . . is a statement that says that the event holder has to comply with, has to contact the local governmental entities, which is the city, school district, county and federal government, and it’s my understanding that Judge Moses is working on some rules, some recommendations to tell us what it is . . .It’s Paragraph 20.74 under ‘application’ and it’s Item O, ‘written approval from the property owner.’ ‘If any portion of the event is held on or affects the reasonable use of private property, which includes the use of property owned or under the control of federal, state, county and local governmental entities,’ so with Judge Moses’ cooperation, if she submits a set of rules for us to follow, then they (people requesting the event) will have to follow those rules.”
“Would that list of rules be attached to the application, or how would (the event holder) get that? That’s great for something downtown, but we have a lot of different governmental agencies and buildings scattered throughout the town,” DeReus said.
Smith replied, “I would recommend to contact each of them and have them give us a set of their requirements, and then we would attach those to the application. If we don’t include them in the ordinance, then they can be flexible in terms of what they want to do or don’t want to do later on.”
“So given that, that would mean the application would not be quite ready for prime time, do we need to postpone this for another meeting, just to make sure that the application’s tight before we do it, because I’d hate to pass this tonight and a couple days from now, someone comes in to get an application, and it’s not really ready,” DeReus said.
“As the judge said, we don’t really have an application. Really what it turns out, what we have is a Del Rio Police Department policy that’s governed by the Del Rio Police Department, and it only applies to closing streets and residences, that’s why there was that confusion, so we don’t have anything to stop anybody,” Smith replied.
Interim City Manager Manuel Chavez noted the ordinance only applies to event planners using city property.
Interim City Planning and Zoning Director Scot Carcasi concurred.
Councilwoman Carmen Gutierrez asked if event planners would be on “an honor system” to contact the required governmental entities and asked if the city would withhold a permit until those entities were contacted.
“So with approval of (the ordinance), the application wouldn’t be accepted because if it did occur, and we’ll use this example: they hadn’t approached the federal courthouse, they wouldn’t have had that approval, so the application would be denied until they had that approval,” Carcasi said.
“So you would not issue the permit, then, unless you’re sure that the entity had given their approval?” Gutierrez asked.
“That’s correct. This ordinance allows us to review the location (of a planned event), and part of the ordinance is that we have to evaluate how does it affect police, fire, EMS response. There’s a section in the ordinance if there’s a requirement for fire department access, EMS access because sometimes we get really crowded and we’re having a good time, but we don’t think about what happens if a fire truck needs to come through, so the fire department adopted a manual that has those guidelines and that’s included in this ordinance,” Carcasi replied.
Gutierrez asked if the new ordinance would apply to non-profit organizations as well.
“For anybody applying for a special event permit,” Carcasi replied.
Answering a question from the mayor, Carcasi said the street closure ordinance dealt more with block parties and residences.
“This kind of clarifies all of that. We were making it work because that was all we had, but this clarifies the application process, the approval processes and other requirements,” Carcasi said.
Arreola asked DeReus if he still wanted to table to ordinance, and Smith said there was supposed to be an appendix to the ordinance with recommended fees that was not included, noting the ordinance would have to come back to council for that reason.
DeReus asked Moses for additional input.
Moses again took the podium.
“My personal opinion is that you need something like this (ordinance). In this last situation, the way I got notice is that our building manager saw somebody out there measuring items and that’s how we found out what was going on, that we were being affected.
“And so even they didn’t have our approval for any of this, the matter was approved, and so, my concern is, I don’t want to have to be looking out the window to see what’s going on. . . If somebody wanted to have some type of extreme event, you don’t have anything right now that guides or limits that, other than if they’ve checked all the boxes off to close the streets; that’s it,” Moses said.
She said the event she was referencing earlier was now being planned for every quarter.
“I want to be a good neighbor. I love Del Rio. I’ve been here now 34 years, but we do have some limitations,” the judge added.
After some additional conversation, DeReus asked Carcasi if he was recommending the ordinance be approved immediately or be postponed.
“I would recommend approving it so we can at least get going,” Carcasi said, noting that the fee schedule would be approved during the city’s budget process.
Arreola asked Moses if she would present her set of rules and regulations to the city, and Moses said the U.S. Marshals Services is working on a security packet so the city would be aware what the federal courthouse security requirements are.
Councilman Randy Quiñones then made a motion to approve the ordinance, with Gutierrez giving the second.
The council voted unanimously to approve Quiñones’ motion to accept the ordinance.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
