Today (Tuesday) was an ongoing saga in the city’s effort to (re)institute a Sit-Lie Ordinance, which would ban people from sitting or lying on the sidewalks downtown and in the Lloyd District, in order to not gross out all the shoppers who come to Portland to blow wads of cash.

Randy Leonard introduced a resolution that would delay the implementation of the ban until all of the Street Access For Everyone (SAFE) committee’s recommendations for benches, public restrooms, and a day access center for the homeless were in place. Both Sam Adams and Erik Sten have suggested support for his resolution in the most tenuous, non-binding terms, leaving Mayor Tom Potter to face a potential majority vote against him.

This evening, the co-chairs of the SAFE committee—the Portland Business Alliance’s Mike Kuykendall and attorney Monica Goracke—sent a letter to Leonard, saying, in short, that the ordinance has plenty of safeguards, that they are working towards meeting all of the recommendations, and that the SAFE committee as a whole signed off on moving forward on the Sit-Lie Ordinance.

Leonard then responded, reinforcing his position that the Sit-Lie rule should only go into effect once all the other pieces are in place, and expressing more than a little exasperation at the process:

If each of you in fact understood that the enforcement provision would be enforced months before any of the SAFE committees recommendations were fully implemented, where did you anticipate the homeless would end up during the day? I cannot imagine that you agreed that it was OK for the restrooms to not be installed and opened, that the benches would not be fully completed and, most disappointing, the day access centers would be months from being completed all the while having the sidewalk obstruction ordinance fully enforced beginning this Saturday.

BURN! The full letters from all parties are after the jump.

Subject: SAFE Oversight Committee

Dear Commissioner Leonard,

We write to respond to your letter and resolution. As co-chairs of the SAFE Oversight Committee, we would like to address your statements about the committee's work.

The Oversight Committee has been meeting on a weekly basis since January. The list of entities and people who are either members or regular attendees include Sisters Of The Road, JOIN, Oregon Law Center, New Avenues for Youth, the Portland Police Bureau, the Parks Bureau, the District Attorney's office, the Portland Business Alliance, the Lloyd Business District, the Mayor's office, Commissioner Sten's office, residents of downtown/Old Town/Chinatown, and people with experience of homelessness. As you can see from this list, there are a number of people who either represent social service agencies or have direct experience of homelessness themselves. These individuals have actively participated throughout the process. No single entity, i.e. either the Portland Police Bureau or the Portland Business Alliance, is running or improperly influencing the Oversight Committee.

Our approach is neither hasty nor enforcement-centric. The ordinance contains more safeguards, both on its face and as it will be enforced, than any previous ordinance on this or any other topic. The standard operating procedure (SOP) and the training curriculum developed by the Police Bureau both clarify that enforcement will occur at the lowest level possible, that officers must engage in verbal conversations about the law before issuing any warning or citation, and that any officer who warns or cites must be a specifically trained police officer. The warning form went through dozens of drafts to make sure the law is as clear as possible to both officers and individuals. In summary, the ordinance is moving forward in stages just like all the other areas of the SAFE consensus. This was the spirit of the consensus and this is what we are charged with implementing.

The Oversight Committee is making solid progress on the benches, restrooms, and day access center plan. Besides the over 600 benches already existing in the high pedestrian traffic areas designated in the ordinance, there are 6 new benches on the streets and 25 more will be installed next month after siting decisions have been made by our group.

There are multiple public restroom stalls available during hours that were not available before SAFE and we are working to find ways to expand those hours even more. The day access center plan is moving forward both with expanded hours at Julia West House and through the RFP process for day services. We decided to publish an RFP rather than recommend a second day access center specifically because homeless people themselves advocated for that choice. We are happy to provide more details of our progress, and we invite you to appoint a liaison from your office to attend our meetings.

Our approach was and is supported by the Oversight Committee as a whole and was sanctioned by Council. In addition, our changes to the original SAFE recommendations were ratified by the SAFE Workgroup. As you know, it takes time to fund, structure and implement new programs and facilities. We are doing the best we can to implement the SAFE consensus and to allocate the funds set aside for this project responsibly, sustainably, compassionately and fairly. That involves moving all pieces of the consensus forward. We are asking hard questions and dealing with hard issues that have not been effectively solved by anyone before. We hope that our efforts at due diligence are not misinterpreted as failure to implement a set of recommendations that has widespread support from diverse constituents in our community, and that we believe truly will benefit this community.

Sincerely yours,

Monica Goracke and Mike Kuykendall
SAFE committee co-chairs

In other words: "Why won't you let us keep the homeless out of sight from our customers?!?! We worked hard to give you a handful of compromises that we've since compromised. Why must you insist that we keep having to smell these hobos? We worked HARD! And we gave you MONEY!"

Leonard's response:

Monica and Mike-

I appreciate all the work both of you have done. However, it was never discussed at the council when the ordinance was considered last month that the enforcement provision would begin before the restrooms, benches, day access center and showers were up and running.

If each of you in fact understood that the enforcement provision would be enforced months before any of the SAFE committees recommendations were fully implemented, where did you anticipate the homeless would end up during the day? I cannot imagine that you agreed that it was OK for the restrooms to not be installed and opened, that the benches would not be fully completed and, most disappointing, the day access centers would be months from being completed all the while having the sidewalk obstruction ordinance fully enforced beginning this Saturday.

I believe tying the enforcement of the sidewalk obstruction ordinance to completion of the SAFE committees recommendations will create an incentive to get the restrooms, benches and day access center completed sooner rather than later.

Again, I do appreciate your work but I also believe very much in fairness, especially for those who may be stuck on the bottom rung of our community's ladder.

I hope you consider my position seriously and could find your way to support my resolution delaying enforcement until all of your excellent recommendations have been implemented.

I appreciate both of you writing me....Randy