The San Clemente City Council unanimously directed city staff on Tuesday night, March 7, to draft an ordinance that intends to reduce pedestrian encroachment onto medians and public rights-of-way.
City officials have stated that in addition to reducing pedestrians’ ability to solicit charitable donations and sell goods or services, such an ordinance would protect both pedestrians and drivers from dangerous situations.
“I’m trying to reach the people that stand in the median of the highway, stop traffic, sell roses, (and) create a safety issue for themselves and for the cars,” Councilmember Victor Cabral said, speaking in support of city staff’s recommendation to draft the ordinance.
Mayor Chris Duncan referenced that several nearby cities have similar ordinances on the books, of which he favored Aliso Viejo’s the most, but said that the council will wait for further staff input to quibble over details.
The subject of panhandling has reached the United States Supreme Court and lower courts on numerous occasions, with varying results. A 1980 Supreme Court ruling in Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment determined the practice to be a form of speech protected under the First Amendment.
Cities restricting solicitation must have narrow, content-neutral ordinances that serve a pressing government interest, such as public safety, according to the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
These past circumstances are why City Attorney Scott Smith’s office will be involved in drafting the ordinance to help the city avoid legal action.
“We’ll come back to you with a recommendation that has safety as its central core and that’s only as broad as necessary,” Smith said.
Nonprofit groups such as the National Homelessness Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center have argued against similar ordinances, saying that city resources are wasted on policing pedestrians that include homeless people who cannot pay fines and instead need help.
The NHLC’s #IAskForHelpBecause campaign seeks the repealing of anti-panhandling laws across the country.
The agenda item was months in the making, after the Public Safety Committee recommended the council consider an ordinance in November 2022 following council direction in September for the committee to dive deeper on the matter.
Councilmember Gene James, then the mayor, led that direction, calling the trend of seeing people going into the streets to solicit increasingly problematic.
“I really think that we need to look at an ordinance on that and start nipping that in the bud,” James said previously.
Ordinances in Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, and Lake Forest were considered during the Public Safety Committee’s discussions, with members such as Committee Chair Rick Loeffler and Scotland Roeber favoring Laguna Niguel’s model.
“I think the Laguna Niguel model is probably the one that I draw to, because it seems like it’s the most enforceable and the least granular,” said Roeber. “It leaves the most ability for that deputy … to have that discretion to enforce or educate, and to apply the law in the appropriate scale.”
Laguna Niguel’s ordinance, as provided by the city’s agenda report for Tuesday night’s meeting, prohibits solicitation for commercial purposes and activities associated with sidewalk vending without a permit, solicitation on public property, and perpetration of deception or fraud while soliciting.
Activities permitted by Laguna Niguel’s City Council or another department are still allowed.
Violations of Aliso Viejo’s prohibition of street-side solicitation are defined as an infraction of California Government Code Section 36900, in which offenders must pay a fine not more than $100 the first time, $200 the second time within the same year, and $500 for each additional infraction during the same year.
Public Safety Committee Vice Chair Charlie Hightower raised concerns that an ordinance might unfairly impact homeless people in San Clemente, but his colleagues assured him that the main objective was public safety.
San Clemente Homeless Collaborative co-chair Donna Vidrine spoke during Tuesday’s council meeting to say that resources should be instead allocated toward regulating electric bicycles and solutions to homelessness and transportation.
“Vote in the majority against initiation of this unnecessary, litigation-prone ordinance, and have a voice for better utilization of city resources,” Vidrine said.
Maura Mikulec, another local advocate for unsheltered persons, spoke to San Clemente Times to express her position against the ordinance. In an email, she agreed with Vidrine’s point that the city would waste resources enforcing the ordinance, arguing that the “criminalizing” of homelessness equated to kicking people while they’re down.
“People want to help their neighbors,” Mikulec wrote. “Why do we care if someone solicits donations to get a good meal or a roof over their head on a cold night or whatever and someone wants to contribute to that?”
City staff and the city attorney’s office will next work on drafting the ordinance, where an indication of what punishments will be instituted for violations has yet to be given.
Discussion about this post