South Elm Street business owners met with District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and members of Greensboro city staff on May 18 to discuss parking challenges. One of the issues of discussion was homelessness. Participants listed suggestions for dealing with various challenges on sticky notes.
Comments revealed intolerance for homeless people, and one directly advocated violating their human rights: "1) Make panhandling illegal, 2) Ban panhandling, 3) Don't allow panhandling, 4) No panhandling in BID, 5) Lose the panhandlers, 6) Bus homeless to Friendly, and 7) Taser the homeless."
Minutes indicate that the following individuals were in attendance: Alex Amoroso, Grey Davis, Becky Causey, Gregory George, Sidney Gray, Betty Cone, Jim Marshall, Seth Marshall, Ed Wolverton, Bruce Beaman, Kevin Danko, Simonne McClinton, William Heroy, Michael Schiftan, John Bailey, Catherine Chauvin and Pat Sawyer.
I wonder if anyone cares that such statements are made. And I wonder if any of the participants feel sufficiently embarrassed by the suggestion to taser the homeless that they might want to publicly distance themselves from it.
UPDATE, 5:47 p.m.: Matheny called me unprompted to clarify that the "taser the homeless" comment does not, in any way, reflect his viewpoint. The councilman said the woman who made the comment, whose name he does not recall, is an employee of a South Elm Street business.
"She made what I thought was a poor comment," Matheny told me. "There was no way that police would ever consider doing such an act."
The councilman also disavowed the comment advocating taking Spanish off the parking meters, which he said might have been made by the same person.
"I don't see the point in that," he said. "Those are derogatory comments of someone lashing out. It's not how I would talk."
12 comments:
Whooooooooooooooa! That is so fucked up. Jordan, can you get more details on this (particularly the taser part)?
Thanks
i care. emailed you with questions. will follow up for sure.
Not that I support any of those comments, but what were some of the good or feasable ideas those individuals came up with on their sticky notes? Obviously the local law enforcement won't be tasering the homeless anytime soon, but will angry comments like that, I'd really like to know what kind of more realistic ideas they did come up with.
Anonyous: There isn't really much more to it. Sue Schwartz with the city of Greensboro apparently asked South Elm Street business owners to list issues related to the parking problem. The issues include valet parking, loading zones, "more employee parking needed," parking decks, "free parking inequitable," motorcycle parking, signage, "homeless," traffic, safety/visibility, "lack of enforcement," and "new pay station." The sticky note exercise was used to brainstorm both problems and solutions for all these issues.
Laura: The suggested solutions are extensive and varied, ranging from more enforcement to using land at South Elm and Lee streets for employee parking, running a free shuttle on Friday and Saturday, building a parking garage at South Elm and McGee streets (?), charging for parking 24 hours to taking Spanish off parking meters.
The minutes say that staff will develop potential recommendations and review with council, that there will be a public hearing on the recommendations and that an implementatin plan will be finalized. I'm not adept at posting documents to the blog, but if anyone wants more detail, you can request a copy of the the City Manager's IFYI (the document which includes the minutes from Susan Covington at the city of Greensboro.
I will say that some of us have homeless friends and family. We patronize South Elm Street businesses, but if we learned that a specific business owner advocated harming our friends and family members — under circumstances that exceeded a police officer using reasonable force to subdue an uncooperative subject or involved specifically targeting a certain class of people — we would have a hard time spending our money at that business.
Also, what's with removing Spanish from the parking meters downtown? Do downtown business owners have a problem with Spanish speakers spending their money at their shops?
First, I think all these comments concerning homeless downtown are repulsive. I would think that if business owners were truly concerned about homelessness and its impact on their businesses, they would work with homeless advocates to get increased city funding to prevent homelessness in the first place.
Suggesting that police physically assault homeless as a way to end their prevalence downtown is illegal, immoral, and unconscionable.
Suggesting that they be bused to other areas of the city doesn't solve the underlying problem of homelessness. It merely shines light on these business owners and their self-serving interests. They must think that homelessness and its impact on the city is alright, so long as it doesn't interfere with their own businesses.
On the issue of parking, the issue is not so much about scarcity as it is about the kind of parking that is available. Parking downtown will continue to be an issue until both the city and downtown business owners begin earnestly promoting greater use of parking decks. The idea that consumers should be able to have drive-up parking in the central business district is the kind of small-town mentality that will continue to hold downtown and its revitalization efforts back.
Lastly, the issue of downtown parking presents a great opportunity for the city to accomplish several goals at once. Implementing a downtown circulator service through GTA would not only help alleviate vehicle congestion and the need for parking in the center city, it would also fulfill one of the goals outlined in the city's long range transportation plan.
But such a novel idea may be too forward thinking for Greensboro's leaders, who continue to revel in their own mediocrity.
On a side note, Ryan Shell correctly points out that a considerable amount of S. Elm is represented by District 2. This area includes businesses such as Mellow Mushroom and Elsewhere, among others.
Why would a meeting about S. Elm street parking not involve representation for these business owners?
andrew: because it was a meeting about parking issues in the 300 block of south elm. (according to the minutes.)
jordan: thanks for the minutes. i uploaded them to my own post, here:
http://chosenfast.com/2009/06/09/so-you-heard-about-the-chick-who-wants-to-taser-the-homeless-downtown/
CM: I realized that once I read the minutes from your blog earlier this afternoon.
Thanks for posting them.
Jordan, since Andrew is boasting of his new found interest in Greensboro politics and throwing stones I think it's important that you chose to delete his comment.
I'd love for you to e-mail me that comment to tony@tonywilkins.com if you feel it would be proper.
Tony:
It was removed because it was a double post. Living in a world of paranoia must be tiring.
Tell me Tony, how's maryrakestraw.com coming? Are you going to design it just like you designed Trudy Wade's website?
Speaking of Trudy Wade's website, do you know how she paid for it? It says her campaign paid for it on the website, but her disclosure reports don't show that. And your name shows up as the registrant for the domain name.
Tony: Did you design Trudy Wade's website? And are you designing Mary Rakestraw's website? I don't know what the campaign finance reports say, but I think the point is for us to know who are the candidates' suporters, both in terms of passive agreement and active monetary or in-kind contributions.
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