🚀 go-pugleaf

Interesting post. will this effect tourist coming to the area?

DCI


On 11 May 2007 23:08:46 -0700, dhm_at_best_dot_com@yahoo.com wrote:

>-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Robert Norse rnorse3 at hotmail dot com
>                                  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/huffsantacruz
>Date: May 10, 2007
>
>Parking Lot Panic Expansion Law Headed for Downtown Commission 5-24
>by Robert Norse
>
>Thursday May 10th, 2007 1:35 PM
>
>Back from the graveyard: an expansion of the current Parking Garage
>Paranoia
>Law to include every single surface parking lot in the Downtown area
>banning
>those without cars and bikes and requiring those who use the lots to
>time
>themselves and make sure they spend no more than 15 minutes going to
>and
>from their vehicle or waiting in their vehicle.
>
>The City's ban on entering its 4 downtown parking garages as well as
>Parking
>Lot #9 (Elm St. between Cedar and Pacific) is slated to be broadened,
>if the
>Public Works Department has its way.
>
>I spoke with Matt Ferrell, outgoing Parking Supervisor, who confirmed
>that
>the issue of expanding the law had already been raised at the March
>Downtown
>Commission meeting (unbeknownst to me). I hope to have a tape of that
>meeting available for play on the air next Sunday on my
>Bathrobespierre's
>Broadsides Free Radio Santa Cruz show at 101.1 FM
>(http://www.freakradio.org) sometime between 10 and noon.
>
>The current law fines anyone entering Lot #9 or the garages unless
>they have
>a vehicle of bike there. If they do, they get 15 minutes, after which
>they
>become "illegal".
>
>The privatization (or perhaps we should say police-a-fication) of
>public
>space was primarily a response to homeless campers who (still) have no
>legal
>shelter in Santa Cruz (space for 40 for 1500-2000). Instead of
>legalizing
>safe sleeping zones as Fresno's mayor says he'll be doing, or
>suspending
>nighttime ticketing as San Diego and Los Angeles have done, or
>changing
>their Sleeping Ban law as Richmond has done, the Reilly-Coonerty
>Council has
>hired more 7 more CSO/Rangers to increase the homeless ticketing in
>the
>Pogonip and promoted "Lone Ranger" John Wallace to Chief Ranger.
>
>Wallace is a nice guy, but an uncompromising zealot regarding homeless
>people in public spaces. He gave out more "sleepcrime" tickets last
>year
>than the entire SCPD combined.
>
>His ticketing of shelterless people violates the federal Jones
>decision (as
>well as common sense and common decency). The seizure and wanton
>destruction
>of homeless property violates the Fresno Kincaid decision (not binding
>precedent here, but an obvious warning to us to stop treating homeless
>survival gear and valued possessions like trash). In laymen's terms,
>Wallace's policy (and City Manager Dick Wilson's policy) treats
>homeless
>people and their property like lower animals, undeserving of
>constitutional
>protection.
>
>I wasn't at the last Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, but it
>reportedly featured another "horror slide show" of wretched homeless
>camp
>sites and trash left behind. This is akin to showing human feces and
>piss
>and ignoring the locked or non-existent bathrooms.
>
>The Downtown Commission meets Thursday May 24 at 8:30 AM in City
>Council
>chambers at 809 Center St. Protests against an expansion of this
>abusive and
>selectively-enforced ordinance can be sent directly to City Council at
>420-5020 or to the Downtown Commission at
>(831) 420-5184 or e-mailed at pw-downtown-commission [at]
>ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
>
>Last year activists successfully fought to remove the parking lots
>from this
>absurd law. Now they're back, seeking to lock down more traditional
>public
>space (including Lot #4 where Food Not Bombs serves every Wednesday.
>They've
>already removed the last of the 24-hour portapotties downtown. Now you
>won't
>be able to wait in your car longer than 15 minutes or even enter one
>of the
>20+ public lots downtown unless you own or are traveling in a car or
>bike.
>If you don't stop the police state, it will stop you.
>
>
>Earlier stories:
>Parking Garage Paranoia Law Stalls Again (Thursday May 11th, 2006)
>http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/11/18225711.php
>
>Parking Lot Panic at City Council Tuesday May 9th (Monday May 8th,
>2006)
>http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/08/18219341.php
>
>Parking Lot Panic Law: Training Tutorial Downtown 3 PM Saturday
>(Friday May
>5th 2006)
>http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/05/18211071.php
>
>Fifteen Minute Parking Lot "Panic" Law At Council Today (4/25)
>http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/25/18177761.php
>
>-----End Forward-----