BILL LEARY
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/12/09
Author H.L. Mencken said, "There is always a well-known solution to every problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
Monday night, our City Commission will consider three new ordinances designed to keep our public places largely free of artists and street performers and vendors.
They may be revised for the hearing, but of the versions introduced three weeks ago, the first adds artists and street vendors to the current prohibition against street performers on and within 50 feet of St. George Street. The second limits all vending and First Amendment expression in the Plaza de la Constitucion to 12 spaces in the small covered market, as determined by a lottery. The protected area will include the plaza's adjacent streets and their abutting sidewalks. The third bans food or beverage sales in most public places, including streets and sidewalks, throughout the city.
The draft ordinances reveal just how St. George Street-centric they are. St. George Street merchants have valid points regarding street vendors and performers, but the justification incorporated into the first ordinance goes so far as to call St. George Street the most important place in America to protect and preserve. I'd put the National Cemetery above it, for starters.
This fight has lasted at least 15 years and every crisis-driven approach has resulted in litigation at great cost to everyone, including the taxpayers stuck with considerable attorney's fees. The result? We seek judicial approval rather than broad community support. Paradoxically, we keep trying to address narrow pieces of the problem (the Plaza and St. George Street) while lumping together for resolution several disparate groups: artists, performers, vendors, and expressers of opinion. To truly address these groups' issues disparately, yet comprehensively, the city should bring all the interests together, listen, and craft one broad solution.
Here's the best of what various people have suggested to me in conversation:
FIRST GRAPH MISSING. USE DROP CAP STYLE SHEET. . Ban everything you can from the plaza. It is a place of reverence not commerce. But if our Constitution says you must allow artists to create and expressers of opinion to express, so be it. This is America.
2. Open up St. George Street and related streets to performers, but limited to designated spaces and subject to approval at audition by a citizens' group of experts. Location, time and manner limitations would be imposed, which could include a lottery. Surely we have musicians and others willing to judge these competitions. This is essentially how musicians get gigs.
3. Designate the covered areas along the sides of the parking garage, or nearby grounds, for vendors and artists and, perhaps, for performers who are not selected for the other designated locations. Require permits. Contract out the management of these areas like a farmers market. Maybe have a farmers' market. Encourage downtown art galleries to sell local art. If some downtown merchants sell the same stuff these street venders seem to sell, maybe someone should upgrade.
4. Allow outdoor café tables on downtown streets where they can be accommodated, such as St. George Street between Cathedral and Hypolita. This "interference with pedestrian traffic" justification to ban street performers is now used to ban these tables. What's next? Trees? Tour groups over 25?
5. Do things to help St. George Street merchants such as better signage, lighting and beautification.
6. Proactively attract businesses locals might enjoy.
7. Expand the pedestrian-only area.
8. Remember it's not all about St. George Street. Do more for the merchants on King Street, San Marco Avenue and similar commercial areas. They need and deserve our help.
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Bill Leary is a member of the Planning and Zoning Board of the City of St. Augustine. He invites your thoughts and comments to the Record or at bill.leary4@yahoo.com.
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