Rental property owners in Des Moines will no longer have to pay the annual Crime Free Housing fee after the city council repealed the mandatory Crime Free Housing Program as part of a settlement with the Rental Housing Association.

The Crime-Free Housing Program was enacted in 2005. It required owners of rental property in Des Moines to pay $100 per rental unit a year, and apply and pay for a separate business license for each rental property.

In addition, rental property owners, or property managers were required to undergo an eight-hour workshop every three years, as well as do a property walk through with police and hold a 'safety social' of the tenants, to obtain a crime-free endorsement.

Julie Johnson, president of the Puget Sound Rental Housing Association, said she feels the fee was an illegal tax. She said the biggest problem was that by charging the crime-free fee, police became property tax collectors.

Des Moines raised approximately $250,000 every year from the fee. This money went to fund a part time police officer and a full time community resource officer, as well as pay for the mandatory workshop.

Rental property owners and property managers were sent a list of all the calls made to their properties each week.

At the council meeting where the program was repealed, Police Chief Roger Baker said the program worked better than he had expected.

According to police records, there was a 48 percent decrease in calls to rental properties between 2004 and 2008, as compared to a 36 percent increase in citywide calls. Also, between 2004 and 2008, serious and violent crimes, designated Part 1 crimes, went down 41 percent, compared to a 14 percent citywide decrease.

The Puget Sound Rental Housing Association (RHA) originally sued the city of Des Moines in 2007 claiming the city was withholding documents about the program they had asked for in a public records request in 2005.

After the RHA filed their lawsuit, Des Moines handed over many documents, but not everything that had been asked for. City officials gave several reasons for why they did not turn over the other documents, such as attorney/client privilege.

"They were not able to hand over enough information for us to get a good idea about the structure," Johnson said.

The case was dismissed by a King County Superior Court judge, who said the RHA had passed the statute of limitations to file suit. RHA took the case to the State Supreme Court, who reversed the decision and sent it back to Superior Court.

The city settled the lawsuit for $107,000 and the repeal of the mandatory program, which was replaced with the voluntary King County Crime-Free Ordinance.

"The RHA was able to use this struggle to bring about reforms in the program," RHA attorney Katherine George said. "It was a very positive outcome for the rental owners in the city."

Des Moines City Attorney Pat Bosmans said she recommended the city repeal the ordinance because she did not want to settle a public records lawsuit and then get sued over the actual ordinance.

Bosmans also said, however, that she had problems with the ordinance as it was originally written. She was not the city attorney when the ordinance was enacted.

"The ordinance provided for a review in five years. One of the groups of people assessed a fee are single-family homeowners. There is no pattern in those homes-- why should they be in the program if there is no pattern shown?" she said.

She said she also had issues with the mandatory participation, as well as the discretion of the city to issue a violation. She said the ordinance gave Des Moines a lot of leeway to issue violations to rental property owners.

According to Tonya Seaberry, Des Moines Police Department community service officer, less than six violations were issued over the life of the program.

Seaberry said the violations were used as a leverage to get rental owners to pay attention to problems.

"If everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing we wouldn't be having this conversation," Seaberry said.

Until it was repealed, Johnson said Des Moines was the only city in the State with a mandatory crime-free housing program. She also said Des Moines is one of the few cities that require rental owners to have a business license.

"This was to ensure that there was open government and fairness and legality to the program," Johnson said.