Mars borough council will discuss, and could make a decision on, implementing a disruptive property ordinance at the next borough council meeting on Monday, April 7.

“There was a request to have more discussion at the upcoming meeting,” said Mars Mayor Gregg Hartung. “There’s going to be more conversation coming up.”

The idea of putting such an ordinance in the borough code was put forward by police chief Mark Lint during the borough council meeting on March 17, mainly in response to a series of disturbances at the Martian Arms complex on Hook Street which required police intervention.

“They’re under new ownership and they’re allowing Section 8 housing,” Hartung said. “That’s the concern.”

During that night’s meeting, Lint left behind a copy of a similar ordinance currently in place in Carnegie Borough, in Allegheny County, where he used to work as a police sergeant.

According to Jeff Kennedy, Carnegie police chief, the borough implemented their ordinance in 2008 mainly out of necessity.

“We were having a lot of repeated calls to the same apartment buildings and the same type of problems.” Kennedy said. “It got to the point where we were constantly going to the same apartment over and over again, and we were having three strikes a month in some cases.”

In Carnegie, if a tenant is found to have violated the “disruptive conduct” ordinance three times within a 12-month period, and the landlord fails to have the tenant evicted within 10 days of being informed of the third offense, the landlord can have their occupancy permit stripped.

Despite the apparent stiffness of the penalty, Kennedy says landlords in the borough are glad to have the ordinance in place.

“Most of the landlords are looking to get rid of these people anyhow,” Kennedy said. “It gives them a little more leverage.”

If Mars adopts the disruptive property ordinance, it would not be the first municipality in Butler County to do so. Both Butler and Buffalo Township, have similar “disruptive property” ordinances on their books, with Butler implementing its in 2012, and Buffalo Township doing so in September.

In Butler, a property is officially dubbed a “disruptive” property if disruptive activity has occurred on three separate occasions within a one-year period. Similar to Carnegie’s ordinance, Butler’s legislation gives the city the ability to revoke an occupancy permit if a property is declared a “public nuisance” — an instance where three more “disruptive conduct” incidents occur within a one-year period after a property has been declared disruptive.

The threat of revocation is in effect until, to quote the city ordinance, "...the nuisance has been fully abated.” This language applies to both rental and owner-occupied properties.

“If the landlord says, ‘Well, I’m filing for eviction,’ and they show us proof that they filed for eviction, they’re taking the proper course of abatement,” said city council member Don Shearer.

Compared to other similar ordinances in Butler and Carnegie, Buffalo Township’s ordinance is somewhat different. It defines a “disruptive property” as any property which has been the site of three police citations or arrests in a two-month period, instead of the one year allowed by Butler and Carnegie.

According to the terms of the ordinance, any entity found to be operating a “disruptive property” will be fined $600.

While drafting their ordinances, Buffalo Township made one key allowance — that a strike would not be enforced as a result of police being called to a property for a domestic dispute or a broken restraining order. This would prevent the possibility of tenants refraining from calling the police in genuine emergencies for fear of losing their home.

In 2012, Carnegie amended their own ordinance to add similar language.

“Ten to 12 years ago, the state put something out saying, ‘If you have a disruptive conduct ordinance, don’t use it for domestics,’” Kennedy said. “So for domestics there’s no strikes, even if it’s 10 domestics a month.”

Among the property owners affected by Butler’s legislation is the Butler County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which owns several properties across the county and uses them as low-income apartment rental housing.

Edward Mauk, chairman of the authority, says that proper screening for rental properties and enforcement of existing property rules will prevent landlords from running afoul of disruptive property ordinances in the first place.

“I think the key to any kind of property management is the proper screening of the people you’re having in the units,” Mauk said. “We do our best to prescreen residents before we house them. If we have incidents with residents, then we go through the process of removing them from our property.”