City Ready to Sweep the Homeless Out of Downtown
January 8th, 2008 by Alex Pickett in Flashbacks & UpdatesJim Shanklin, who fought the city of St. Petersburg for four years over the 10-foot hedge in his yard, sends me this missive questioning why citizens have to worry about code enforcement, but city officials can turn a blind eye to the trash collecting around City Hall due to the homeless sleeping there at nights.
He addresses Mayor Baker and the City Council:
Your code department spends four years and thousands of our tax dollars taking my wife and I to court over our hedges. The reason was that a 10-foot hedge in the front yard is “aesthetically displeasing” (but a picture of one is just fine). This past weekend we went to Baywalk and passed city hall on the way. There were piles of personal belongings, shopping carts, bicycles, and just plain crap all over the sidewalk around the building. It was not what I would call aesthetically pleasing to the eye and creates a real public safety issue. What do you plan to do about it? Or is storing personal items in front of city hall now allowed? If so I will empty the storage space I rent and bring all my stuff on down and store it there for free. Is this an issue I need to come to the next code enforcement hearing and ask about? It seems pretty hypocritical to me that code enforcement would cite homeowners for outdoor storage and levy fines when bums can do it on the public sidewalks in front of public property. Am I going to get an answer? I doubt it.
On another note I was in Tampa yesterday and passed city hall. It seems that Mayor Pam does not have piles of crap in front of her office. What is your problem?
Shanklin’s point is well taken, but city officials do have a plan for that mess at City Hall. On Thursday, the City Council meets for a first hearing on a new ordinance that would ban all storage of property in the right-of-way, including sidewalks. Those who defy the ordinance will have their property impounded and/or disposed of.
This ordinance joins two other “quality of life” statutes that the City Council will introduce this week: the expansion of the no-panhandling zone downtown and a prohibition against sleeping or “reclining” in the downtown area during daylight hours.
Is it any coincidence tourist season is now in full swing?
January 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
As St Petersburg is dragged kicking and screaming into the 1980’s, there will almost certainly be unpleasant instances of class… confrontation… one might call it. Glad to see Mayor Rick and the gang of forward -thinking visionaries at City Hall are totally on top of the Urban Camping issue. New slogan? “Tent-slashing isn’t welcome here, now that somebdy told us about Youtube on teh internets.”
January 9th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
LOL !!!!
Nope instead those bushies and friends of firefighters will pass ordinances to keep the other masons known as cops and firefighters busy jailing folks so that st pete can LIVE OFF the jail revenues. AND, meantime steal a bunch of stuff from the people that baker’s developer buddies caused to be homeless.
Thank your local firefighters for sponsoring and supporting so many swell city council members.
It’s just great.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
City Hall looks like a crap pile. They should just scrape the sidewalks clean like they did in Lakeland. I’m tired of the homeless crapping on my city and in my neighborhood. Yes. pun intended.