City to tweak resale ordinance

Compliance

"These owners that we have we would like to consider contributors to our community and employers. They look for obvious opportunities to be in compliance, but also a good working relationship with the city as well."”

Mark Rohloff

FORT MADISON – City officials want to take tracking potential stolen property sold at legitimate businesses into the digital world.
A new ordinance was approved on a first reading to require businesses, such as scrappers and pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers, to log purchases digitally, eliminating the need for paper records and ledgers that were require onsite inspections by law enforcement.
Fort Madison Police Chief Mark Rohloff told the council at Tuesday’s regular meeting that the transition will allow for easier inspection of documents while making things easier for the retail outlets.
“This Chapter was originally enacted as consumer protection legislation. Stolen property was, and still is, sold to legitimate businesses for cash. As the industry grew, the ability to monitor such sales became unmanageable,” Rohloff wrote in his summary to the council.
“The new ordinance clearly defines the scope of licensing requirements and eliminates ambiguity by providing definitions and guidelines. It also includes a change to the reporting requirements by implementing an internet-based property tracking system.”
Rohloff said police are solely tasked with the responsibility, there was little opportunity for officers to view the records, and the incentive for businesses to comply with upkeep of records has been diminished.
He said Leads Online, a vendor that offers secure encryption services for the records, would be selected to provide the service at a cost of $2,819 annually. Licensing for the businesses engaging in purchasing property would need to be determined by future council action.
“We needed to clean up some language we currently have in the code,” Rohloff said.
“We really didn’t have any follow through as far as a licensing component as far as what the fee was or the duration of the license.”
Licensing is under the authority of the council and administred by the city clerk. It allows operational standards and, if we determine a business is operating some sort of criminal enterprise or not complying with the requirements, we have the ability to revoke that license and privilege.”
He said some of the requirements are already under state code, but it’s vague as to whether they have to be manual ledgers.
“This proposal does have in there a requirement that I’m allowed to determine a web-based service that would provide the second-hand dealer, pawn broker, and scrap metal dealers the ability to record these online to a service that we would choose and pay for,” Rohloff said.
He said that would allow police to go into those records and search purchases with regard to thefts.
He said the benefits to the businesses is that the city furnishes the service and businesses can do timely record keeping, while allowing the law enforcement greater ease in searching the records.
“We can adequately identify criminal activity, and deal with that,” Rohloff said. “We’ve been making a full court press on trying to deal with the drug problem in Lee County and our community with the addition of the (Lee County) Task Force officer and the dog, this is just one other avenue where drug activity is funded and we’re trying to put a hold on that.”
Rohloff said he’s giving a copy of the proposal to businesses affected by the proposed changes and hasn’t heard any negative comments, however he has asked for feedback.
“These owners that we have we would like to consider contributors to our community and employers. They look for obvious opportunities to be in compliance, but also a good working relationship with the city as well,” he said.