We are trying to make money here people!
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers doesn't want to be a Republican senator but he does want to be a
cold-blooded Republican:
City officials are working on an ordinance, at Mayor John Suthers' behest, to ban people from sitting or lying on sidewalks, planters or anywhere else not specifically designed to be sat upon downtown and in Old Colorado City.
"I don't see this as a civil rights or human rights issue," Suthers said Wednesday. "No one ought to be able to lay on the sidewalk. We ought to make our sidewalks safe for passage so people don't feel obstructed or harassed. I just don't see that it's anti-homeless to say you can't lie or sit on sidewalks."
There you have it. It's not "anti homeless" to make it illegal to be homeless. Especially if you aren't going to provide an alternative to sitting or lying in the streets.
"What does he think he will achieve with this?" asked Linda Boedeker, director of Ecumenical Social Ministries downtown. "Where is he going to move people to if they're sitting on the planter?
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"If we had places for them to go first, and then passed this ordinance, it might make a bit more sense. 'Cause if we just say, 'You need to move,' but we don't have a place for them to move to, I'm not sure it makes sense."
While other people in his home state are proving that it is
more cost effective to house the homeless than just make it illegal to be homeless, John Suthers still feels it necessary to criminalize ... loitering.
The existing city Ordinance 9.2.104 makes it unlawful "for any person to intentionally obstruct any street, sidewalk, parking lane or median" and "for any person to lie down or sleep upon any street, sidewalk, parking lane, median or in any entry, doorway or other area of ingress or egress to any public or private premises, whether on the ground or upon benches, stools, chairs or other seats or surfaces, within the downtown area, so as to interfere with the immediate, free and uninterrupted use of any public street, public sidewalk, entryway or area of ingress or egress to public or private property or any other public place."
In an email, the City Attorney's Office deemed the old ordinance "very limited in its scope" and largely unenforceable.
"First, sitting is not mentioned in this part," the email said. "In addition the statute can be avoid (sic) if the individual simply sits up when confronted by an officer because sitting is allowed. Apparently this happens often."
This will be Mayor John Suthers' first initiative since becoming mayor.