§ 125.043.Notice

Notice of the meeting, in two forms serving two different audiences.

The attorney receiving the request may give notice in either or both of two ways.

Public notice: post notice of the purpose, time, and place of the meeting at either the county courthouse or the city hall where the place complained of is located, and publish the notice in a newspaper of general circulation in that county or city.

That reaches the neighbourhood, which is the point of a meeting at which interested persons state their complaints.

Personal notice: serve the notice, by personal service, to the owner and the operator of the place.

The distinction between owner and operator is deliberate throughout this chapter. The person running the business and the person who owns the building are frequently different, and the nuisance findings can reach either.

Personal service on both is what makes the meeting fair. A proceeding that may lead to a suit against them should not be conducted without their knowing.

Every verb here is permissive. The attorney may post, publish, and serve — so notice is not a precondition of the meeting or of what follows.

That is consistent with what the meeting is. It is an information-gathering exercise leading to a report, not a hearing that decides anything; the decisions come in a lawsuit, with its own service and notice.

An attorney intending to rely on the meeting would nonetheless give notice, since an owner who was never told will say so when the findings are used.