kati.bexley@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/14/07
Artists, vendors must leave plaza
It's official: The artists and vendors are gone from Plaza de la Constitucion after action by the St. Augustine City Commission on Tuesday.
The action did not sit well with local artists.
"You are destroying, out of anger, those things that make this town beautiful," artist Helena Sala told the commission as she began to get teary. "We are the carriers of culture. Please, let's work together."
Sala and about 10 other artists pleaded with the commission at the Tuesday meeting to nix the ordinance. After more than three hours of discussion and public comment, the commission seemed to pass the measure reluctantly on second reading.
"We can't choose who gets to be in the plaza and who doesn't. We tried that already and the courts said no," said City Commissioner Errol Jones. "The courts said all or none. The ews and ahs (from the public) won't take away from that."
The city's previous ordinance allowed only sculpture, paintings, printed materials and photography to be sold in the Plaza de la Constitucion. Vendors selling anything but those items were ticketed by police. Three artists took their cases to court and had the cases against them dismissed.
County Court Judge Charles Tinlin ruled that the Plaza ordinance was "an unconstitutional restriction of (the artists') freedom of speech or expression as guaranteed under the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution."
The city's ordinance was vague because it made police officers arbiters of what is art and what is not, the ruling said.
Artist Gregory Travis said the city's new ordinance, which bans all artists and vendors from the Plaza, also steps on the public's First Amendment rights.
"There will be a battle that shouldn't happen if this ordinance is passed," he said.
The city originally tried to regulate who was allowed to sell items in the Plaza because of complaints that it had become "a flea market circus" with vendors displaying everything from paintings to sunglasses. To keep that from happening again, the commission approved the new ordinance affective immediately, instead of the usual 10-period before an ordinance is enforced.
Commissioner George Gardner said he wants the city to have a workshop on the issue to find another way of resolving the problem. Jones said he plans bring a new idea to handle the issue at the next commission meeting, on Nov. 22. And Commissioner Don Crichlow suggested the city open the plaza once a week to vendors, opposed to when the plaza was used every day by vendors.
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© The St. Augustine Record
Not exactly "crippled by compassion" -- Five Scrooge City Commissioners voted to kick artists out of the Slave Market Square (Plaza de la Constitucion), for 442 years a public marketplace, first in the Nation.
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