Keller City Council will vote to shift the decision-making power in appeals against the city’s sex offender ordinance to the Keller Police Department, the council decided in its work session Tuesday afternoon.

The city’s current sex offender ordinance outlines residency restrictions for local sex offenders and the appeal process for offenders who wish to have the requirements removed. The appeal process only applies when special circumstances arise, the ordinance reads, and appeals are rare, City Manager Mark Hafner told the council Tuesday.

The ordinance currently dictates that appeals will come through the council for a public hearing and vote. The decision at hand during the council’s work session was whether the council was the correct decision-making body to address appeals, and whether the process should instead go through the city manager or police department.

Though council member Chris Whatley said there could be benefits to having more opinions in the appeal process with the current jury-style decision, he and other council members ultimately agreed that shifting the power to the police department would be preferable because it is more qualified and has a better idea of who is a community threat.

Hafner told the Star-Telegram after the work session the amended ordinance will come back to the council for a vote in about two weeks to a month.

The potential ordinance change comes after the city received inquiries from one local sex offender who wants to reside within a child safety zone, Mayor Armin Mizani told the Star-Telegram the morning before the meeting. Mizani said the council wanted to discuss whether it was the right body to redeem appeals before moving further.

There’s no rule with the Texas Sex Offender Registration Program that bars offenders from living near or going to places with children, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. One way access can be denied locally, like in Keller, is through ordinances that instate child safety zones.

Keller’s ordinance defines child safety zones as places like schools, childcare facilities, youth centers and youth athletic fields, as well as more generally populated areas like movie theaters, bowling alleys and jogging and hiking trails. All sex offenders living in Keller — regardless of their risk level or whether they were assigned a risk level — are not allowed to live within 1,000 feet of a child safety zone, according to the current ordinance.

An appeal could happen when an offender wants to live with family who reside within child safety zones, especially when that family has members experiencing medical problems, Hafner, Keller Police Chief Brad Fortune and another city official explained. They said appeals could also occur when an offender wants to live within a child safety zone but at a distance just below the 1,000-foot requirement. The council’s residency requirements were recently passed in October.

While council member Shannon Dubberly understood there could be circumstances where requirements could be alleviated, he told Fortune to err on the side of child safety. Fortune agreed.