Item 3: PH on Ordinance Concerning Used Merchandise Dealers

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is much more effective if all agencies can participate. Uniform adoption eliminates the opportunity for criminals to simply sell their stolen merchandise in another community or in the unincorporated areas of Lane County. Automated reporting programs are growing in North America and other jurisdictions in Oregon are now contemplating the adoption of an automated reporting program. As more agencies begin to utilize an integrated database, options for criminals to sell their stolen items will be even further reduced. Financial Considerations: As described in Attachment B, a vendor with a secure database will electronically receive the automated reports from each store and then make information from that database available to law enforcement agencies. This would replace the current practice of detectives collecting the ‘pawn’ slips from stores and clerical staff manually entering the data into a regional database. Currently, Eugene’s hourly staff cost to collect, manually enter, and review a secondhand dealer transaction is estimated at $2.60 per transaction. Eugene manually entered 11,238 secondhand dealer transactions in FY05 at an annual cost of approximately $29,218. Vendor quotes indicate that a five-year contract, appropriate to this region’s transaction levels, would total $20,200 per year for all three agencies. The transaction level sought by our region would include room for increased transactions or the addition of another interested jurisdiction. In the proposed process for implementing and operating the automated reporting system, EPD would perform the role of the administrating agency. EPD has both the administrative and financial systems available to smoothly coordinate the program. A draft inter-agency agreement has been prepared to determine the responsibilities and contributions of each law enforcement agency participating in the program. After the initial startup of the program, it is anticipated that the cost to the city of Eugene would be minimal, with an annual estimate of $700 to administer the program. This figure includes the work hours required to complete the annual billings, overhead and supervisory time. The anticipated savings in staff hours through the implementation of automated reporting systems would be redistributed toward the detection, recovery and investigation of stolen property cases. The actual cost ($20,200) of automated reporting would be borne by the regulated secondhand stores, using a tiered fee schedule based on the number of annual secondhand dealer transactions. It is anticipated that the annual cost to the individual secondhand store would be $200-$700 per year (see Attachment C). RELATED CITY POLICIES The council goals of a “Safe Community -- where people feel safe, valued and welcome,” and “Effective, Accountable Municipal Government -- a government that works openly, collaboratively, and fairly with the community to achieve measurable and positive outcomes” are both related to the proposed ordinance. COUNCIL OPTIONS The council may choose to: 1.Take action on the item at its February 13, 2006 meeting; 2.Direct staff to redraft the proposed ordinance and then take action on the item at its February 13, 2006 meeting; or 3.Choose to delay action on this item until a later date. L:\CMO\2006 Council Agendas\M060123\S0601233.doc