During its meeting on Monday, July 18, Boulder City Council held a closed session to receive updates and discuss litigation strategy in the pending case between the city of Boulder and Boulder River Holdings, LLC aka The River Restaurant. According to City Clerk Ellen Harne, after receiving an update and holding discussion, Mayor Rusty Giulio re-opened the public council meeting and Council President Drew Dawson made a motion to accept the terms of the Release and Settlement Agreement in the amount of $7,500, to be paid by MMIA, (the city’s insurance carrier), with no admission of liability. All council members present voted unanimously in favor of the motion.
This settlement is the result of a lawsuit filed by The River restaurant owner Greg Hughes in November of 2021. According to a previous article published in The Monitor, the lawsuit “stems from an incident on July 1, 2021, when Hughes was having carpet delivered to a house he owns across Main Street from the restaurant. While Hughes was in Helena, according to the lawsuit, workers from Butte were delivering carpet to the house, located at 108 S. Main St., around 3:15 p.m. While the workers were making the delivery, the suit alleged, City of Boulder accounting assistant Rose Perna entered the home and told the delivery workers that they couldn’t work in Boulder without a city business license, and she then told the workers to leave.”
In a phone call with The Monitor on July 19, 2021, Giulio characterized the dispute over Perna’s code enforcement as “a misunderstanding,” but reiterated that “if you’re conducting commerce in the city limits, our ordinance says you have to have a permit.”
“We had an employee that probably did something she shouldn’t, and I talked to her about it,” Giulio said, adding that Perna was on her lunch break when she entered the house. “One of our employees stuck their head in and said something, and they shouldn’t have.”
Although, as Hughes’ lawsuit notes, Perna is not a law enforcement officer, contracted Boulder City Attorney Ed Guza said in a July 19 phone call that “I know of no requirement of the enforcement of our code based on the employment of a code-enforcement officer,” and that “My understanding is it’s not exclusively the role of a code enforcer. It’s a position that the city has that can be fulfilled by others instead.”
Harne said in a phone call on July 19 that Boulder Code of Ordinances Chapter 5, Section 2—which is now Title XI, Chapter 110—is the only portion of city ordinance she was aware of that governed city requirements for business licenses.
The ordinance states that “It shall be unlawful for any persons, firms or corporations to engage in the businesses, occupations, industries, trades and professions, hereinafter named, within the corporate limits of the city, without first having obtained a license so to do,” and it continues that “Unless otherwise provided, every retailer or renter providing any service or selling any product with intent to make a profit wherein the service or entire sales transaction occurs within the corporate limits of city shall pay a license fee.”
City code does not specifically address whether non-Boulder businesses must hold a valid city business license for their workers to deliver items to destinations within Boulder. The code does not specify how the city should enforce business license requirements.
Hughes declined to comment on the settlement.
