An ordinance that would require guests at Mesa hotels and motels to prove their identities came closer to reality Thursday.

An ordinance that would require guests at Mesa hotels and motels to prove their identities came closer to reality Thursday.

The final wording is still in progress, however, and Thursday's discussion by the City Council's public-safety committee showed how complex such a seemingly simple idea can be.

The proposed ordinance, already in the works for a year, springs from the police department's concerns over crime at hotels and motels, some of which are used by career criminals as their bases of operations.

Last year, Mesa's lodging industry generated more than 4,600 calls for police service, and the worst 10 properties accounted for 49 percent of the warrant arrests and 64 percent of the drug arrests made at hotels and motels.

The ordinance's most basic provision would require guests to show a valid government-issued photo ID including address, date of birth, physical description and a signature. Guests also would need to provide vehicle information.

The property would not be required to record all that information, however. The person's name, address and signature would be kept on file for a year and be made available to public-safety officers if needed for investigations.

Properties could be fined $250 to $2,500 for failing to obey the law.
Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh noted, however, that technology is changing the way some properties register their guests, with some going to paperless systems.
Robert Brinton, president of the Mesa Convention and Visitors Bureau, agreed. He said his group just received a letter from the Hilton hotel chain stating that those properties will no longer require guests who have preregistered and pay with a credit card to show a photo ID when they arrive.

"Those aren't the people we're looking for," Police Chief Frank Milstead said. Many problem customers at hotels and motels pay with cash, and the places where they generally stay are lax when it comes to verifying IDs.

Noting that the quality of hotels is defined by national ratings systems, Brinton said low-end properties might be held to tougher rules than more expensive ones.
"Certain levels of properties, because that's where most of the crime occurs and the calls for service occur - that level of property may need to have a tougher set of regulations than those who aren't operating that way," Brinton said.

He also said a large hotel may be operating properly but have numerous calls for police service simply because they have far more guests than smaller, more seedy operations.
One new proposal that emerged Thursday is a hotel-motel review board, which would be established by the ordinance and join Mesa's other public-advisory panels.

Brinton said the board would have five members, four of whom would be recommended by the visitors bureau and one by the police department. The council would have the final say on appointments.

There probably would be at least two hoteliers on the board, Brinton said. Others would have experience in the hospitality industry. Their job would be to help the industry police itself and stay in compliance with the ordinance.

A property cited under the ordinance, for example, could be given 60 days to comply, Brinton said, the aim being to "help a property that wants to get better, to get better."Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/10/14/20101014mesa-city-council-hotel-motel-rules1015.html#ixzz12RzGeV8M