Ill-advised City burghers insist upon creating problems instead of solving them, failing to act to require City-owned restrooms be open and ADA accessible bathrooms despite USDOJ ADA complaint and irrefrrable evidence of public urination/defecation.
RECORD EDITORIAL: April Fool’s an apt week to roll out panhandler law
Posted at 12:01 AM
Updated at 6:08 AM
St. Augustine Record
St. Augustine embarks on a brave new world of regulation when its new panhandling ordinance goes into effect Thursday.
It may be telling that this editorial is being published on April Fool’s Day. It’s going to be an interesting couple of months — at least.
The new ordinance leaves little room for — how might we put this — behavioral, hygienic or geographic contingencies. In other words, the ordinance covers all the bases.
In the often mind-numbing practice of absorbing the legalese of ordinances, you know you’re in for something special when you encounter no less than 23 “whereas” paragraphs leading up to the actual law. These stipulate just why the ordinance is warranted. You’ll find neither an “i” not dotted nor a “t” not crossed.
What follows are dozens of pages of vivid, grisly accounts of the various ways sneezes, wheezes, urine, feces, vomit and every other bodily secretion can and will infect the general public when emitted by a panhandler. And the city has some pretty graphic evidence of them all.
Few of these concerns are new. It wasn’t that long ago the downtown Plaza was bordered all around by a hedge. That was eventually removed because of the feces and filth city workers were forced to contend with on an almost daily basis.
From where we sit, the biggest problem ahead will be with the public’s understanding of the new law, and acceptance will be a matter of definition. Who are these people?
We feel bad for the homeless; less so for vagrants; and even less so for panhandlers. But who’s who out there? Poor hygiene and dirty clothes are a common denominator that confuses the issue.
And that’s more planned than you might think.
We don’t believe the homeless are much of a problem downtown. Panhandlers are another story and an interesting one.
Cities that have done studies seem to agree that about 10 percent of the panhandlers are homeless. Begging has become a vocation. There are websites that hand out panhandling advice. Need.com advertises itself as “Market Research for Panhandlers.”
The website developer, Cathy Davie, wants people to start “thinking about panhandling as a realistic economic activity, rather than thinking that panhandlers are lazy or don’t work.” Website developers, too, we suspect.
At any rate, it will be a bumpy road ahead for all involved. One former police officer, who asked not to identified, saw a train wreck ahead. Will cops armed with tape measures be running up and down the streets with vagrants moving constantly so as not to be caught 20 feet from the entrance of a business? “Herding cats” was his metaphor.
But in the spirit of the day, we believe we can point to one bright hope for the ordinance. We remember a county ordinance that one might call “site specific” too, this one in an attempt to corral the concept of nudity.
The 358-word ordinance became a national story. Johnny Carson shared it with millions of viewers on his late-night show. The ordinance outlined legal parameters for terms such as “nude” and “breast,” but it was the definition of the derriere that became the butt of jokes to come.
It reads: “BUTTOCKS — The area at the rear of the human body (sometimes referred to as the gluteus maximus) which lies between two imaginary straight lines running parallel to the ground when a person is standing, the first or top such line being 1⁄2 inch below the top of the vertical cleavage of the nates (i.e., the prominence formed by the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom such line being 1⁄2 inch above the lowest point of the curvature of the fleshy protuberance (sometimes referred to ... as the gluteal fold), and between two imaginary straight lines, one on each side of the body (the “outside lines”), which outside lines are perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and which perpendicular outside lines pass through the outermost point(s) at which each nate meets the other side of leg. Notwithstanding the above, buttocks shall not include the leg, the hamstring muscle below the gluteal fold, the tensor fasciae latae muscle or any of the above-described portion of the human body that is between either the left inside perpendicular line and the left outside perpendicular line or the right inside perpendicular line and the right outside perpendicular line. For the purpose of the previous sentence the left inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary straight line on the left side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is 1/3 of the distance from the anus to the left outside line, and the right inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary straight line on the right side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is 1/3 of the distance from the anus to the right outside line.”
The bottom (sorry) line here is that this thing ended up passing stringent legal muster and several lawsuits — and there hasn’t been a single bared hamstring muscle below the gluteal fold in the county since.
If this worked, can the city’s chances be far behind (sorry, again)?
2 comments:
Spot-freakin'-on!
Saint Fascistine!
The immoral pig hypocrites have finally come out of the closet.
The shift from evilism to xtrevilism continues.
The disgusting morally weak locals have been played.
They will now reap, far, far, far greater problems than the burden of homelessness that they have created for themselves.
This phony Unconstitutional ordinance marks a milestone in the intentionally orchestrated global program of creating intentional conflict in the masses.
External forces beyond the control of the city are now dominant.
Mark 2018 as the year the carefully crafted financial bubble bombs begin exploding around the globe.
Events now decay faster than a human body can decompose in a casket.
Opportunities are lost in the blink of an eye.
You reap what you sow.
http://saintaugdog.com/
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