The city council on Monday passed an update to the city’s nuisance property law that clarifies a few aspects of the ordinance and adds more teeth to the emergency provisions of the law.

Originally passed in March 2014, the law is designed to help the city deal with chronic problem properties, such as those that receive multiple calls for police service within a 60-day period. The ordinance allows the the city the ability to revoke the business license of chronic nuisance properties, such as taverns that get many calls for fights, noise and other police complaints.

But City Attorney Larry Warren said his office noticed a few things in the law that could potentially cause the city problems trying to enforce it so  few minor changes had to be enacted.

For example, one of the changes approved Monday makes sure calls to an establishment are for incidents actually occurring at the establishment. According to Warren, two of the police visits to one local bar dealt with high school kids being too loud as they crossed the business’s parking lot. Another listed the address because a driver pulled over for a DUI pulled into the establishment’s parking lot.

However, none of those incidents had anything to do with the business and should therefore not be counted against them.

“We want to make sure it’s clear due process is involved in this thing and that the incidents are connected to the business,” Warren said.

Warren said the city also strengthened the emergency provisions, giving them a little more teeth. Now, following two physical assaults or shootings at a given location, the city can issue an emergency nuisance citation and potentially pull the business’s license.

The changes also include a new section making it clear that the legal owner has a presumption of control over the property and knows what a lessee is doing.

The changes also include a more detailed list of what constitutes a decaying or damaged property for the sake of being considered a nuisance, adding things like “general disrepair” and “structural defects.”

Warren said the changes were mostly minor in nature and said nuisance laws and how to handle nuisance properties is something municipal attorneys are always dealing with.

City Communications Director Preeti Shridhar said the nuisance ordinance has been very effective thus. Mayor Denis Law even cited its successes in his state of the city address last week, talking about how the previous year there had been several local drinking establishments that became public safety concerns or nuisances for nearby residents.

“Today, every one of the problem businesses has since closed of changed their operations to a point where the neighborhoods are no longer negatively impacted,” Shridhar said in an email.

“It’s a constant topic of conversation,” he said.