[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Camping ban statistics

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Weaver, Sam

Fellow Council members and Hotline followers,

First off, many thanks to City staff, the Museum of Boulder, the members of the public in attendance, Heather Bergman, and my fellow Council members who made our annual retreat such an effective discussion of our plans for the next two years.  Staff especially deserves our thanks for being such a valuable resource for our discussions and for hanging with us for 14 hours on a weekend.

One of our discussion topics was the camping ban in town, and a desire to know how that is affecting all residents and businesses in Boulder.  To shape our future discussions, Andrew Shoemaker and I agreed to formulate a few data requests from staff, and to find out how much work it would be to assemble this data.  We did so during a retreat break yesterday, and below are the data that we feel Council would need to have at hand to begin any discussions of the camping ban impacts.

If possible, we would like to see the following information, broken down by month and year, since the inception of the camping ban:


1)      The number of tickets issued for violation of the camping ban, for which the camping ban violation is the only citation issued for that contact,

2)      The number of tickets issued for violation of the camping ban, for which the camping ban violation is one of multiple citations issued for that contact,

3)      How many of the contacts in #1 and #2 above resulted in subsequent failure to appear (FTA) warrants issued, broken down by the criteria of #1 and #2 above,

4)      How many of any FTA warrant issued as a result of camping ban citations (broken down by the criteria of #1 and #2 above) resulted in any jail time for the cited party,

5)      How many individuals experienced jail time as a result of a citation issued for a camping ban in which that is the only citation issued for that contact (no other warrants for that individual leading to the jail time),

6)      How many separate individuals have received citations for violating the camping ban

That is the data request that we would like to see scoped by staff, so that we can consider a nod of five Council members to proceed or not with the data assembly.

Finally, we had a few legal and procedural questions, which we think can be answered with very little staff time:


1)      Can a person who receives a citation solely for violating the City's camping ban ordinance be sentenced to jail time based on the current letter of the law?

2)      What is the practice of our municipal court regarding sentencing for a single violation of the camping ban in which that is the only citation in a contact?

3)      What is the practice of our municipal court regarding sentencing of an individual who has violated the camping ban ordinance multiple times, but who otherwise has no other charges filed?

Thanks in advance for letting us know how much effort the data assembly for the first set of questions would entail, and for clarifying for us the current practices addressed by the second set of questions.

All the best in 2016!

Sam Weaver
Member of Boulder City Council
weavers at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:weavers at bouldercolorado.gov>
Phone: 303-416-6130